Migrancy, Memory and Transplantation in Manuel Rivas'sLa mano del emigrante

Abstract

In this article, I explore Manuel Rivas's construction of Galician identity through an analysis of his La mano del emigrante. I argue that Rivas establishes as a common cultural attachment among Galicians the impossibility of grounding their identity on a sense of belonging tied to a geographic boundary. To illustrate this, Rivas reconstructs the lives of Galician migrant workers in London and shipwrecked fishermen rather than writing about those who have never left their homeland. I discuss how he includes an ethical consideration in his theorization of Galician identity: he proposes the remembering of Galicians who died outside Galicia as a moral duty of those who have survived through an allegory of transplantation. To dismantle the ways in which Rivas envisions Galician cultural distinctiveness, I examine the relation between the first short story of the book and the album of twenty-four photographs that reflect the story. In particular, I consider the photographs that bring forth the social invisibility of migrant workers and the function of postcards included in the book. I also interrogate how the notion of transplantation serves to explain the displacement of Galician immigrants and the necessity of hospitality towards the displaced.

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