Milli mála - 01.06.2016, Blaðsíða 129

HÓLMFRÍÐUR GARÐARSDÓTTIR
Milli mála 8/2016 129
father from Limón, but living in the capital, San José. Neither
Laura’s cultural heritage nor her skin color matches the ‘official’
image of the homogeneous Costa Rican social identity discussed
earlier. She feels out of place in San José and soon moves to Limón,
her emotional refuge, where she goes to spend time with her mater-
nal aunt Maroz, an independent woman, proud of her Arab back-
ground and a dedicated fighter against the dominant patriarchal
system. In an attempt to give Laura a new identity, Maroz renames
her with the Arabic name Aisha.29 Her aim is to promote a new
self-understanding in the young woman and to liberate her from
her parents, exhausted by their attempt to integrate into a commu-
nity that has always seen them as others.
However, Limón does not offer Laura an ethnic ‘locus amoe-
nus’.30 When, through her childhood friend Percival (also known as
Ahmad), she, as Aisha, meets a group of black civil-rights advo-
cates, who follow the ideas of Marcus Garvey and the Black Panthers
(27),31 she is rejected and excluded: “Why youh call har árabe? She
plain pañagirl. […] Porque es más árabe que paña…. […] Árabe to
‘r ass! Más paña que el gallo pinto. Aisha you say? Nobady calls her
dat. Does she even speak Arabic? Is she a Muslim?”.32 In the context
of this localized civil-rights struggle, she is not black enough (in
skin color or culture), although she speaks the local English.33 She
shares views with these local activists, engaged in a campaign
against mono-ethnic, national perceptions of the citizen, and the
Spanish cultural heritage and political domination, but is rejected.
29 Aisha was the name of Prophet Muhammad’s second wife.
30 For further information on Laura’s ‘coming of age’, see Chen Sham Jorge´s article, “Representación
de la infancia en el Bildungsroman costarricense: Ana Cristina Rossi y Rima de Vallbona”, La Mujer
en la Literatura del Mundo Hispánico, Westmister, USA: Instituto Literario y Cultural Hispánico,
2005, pp. 307-315.
31 Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was a Jamaican entrepreneur, publisher and promoter of the Pan-
Africanist movements. He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement,
which advocated the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. For further information
see www.marcusgarvey.com/ [Accessed August 2016].
32 Rossi, Limón Reggae, San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Legado, 2007, “¿Habla árabe acaso? ¿Es
musulmana?”, p. 47.
33 The civil rights movement in Limón is represented by “CoRev”: “Todos los de CoRev terminamos
el bachillerato pero si queremos ser profesionales tenemos que irnos de aquí. Man! [...] gracias a
los compañeros que nos mandan libros y periódicos de Nueva York y California. Estados Unidos
es Pig Amerika como dicen los Panthers pero es también una fuente de conocimiento y de concien-
tización. Como en los tiempos de Garvey”, p. 46.