Hospitality and Borders in Oscar Cásares' Where We Come From

Resumo

If building and reinforcing the wall separating the United States from Mexico was one of the signature policies of the Trump presidency, the spreading of anti-immigrant rhetoric in social media and extreme right illustrate the more elusive presence of a rhetorical and ideological border that accompanies the Southern border. Within this political climate, this chapter explores how Cásares’ novel illustrates different modalities of hospitality as the protagonist, Nina, administers a changing hospitable response in her encounter with the Other. In Cásares’ novel, the Other is a boy, Daniel, who is trying to reunite with his father. To the common equation of Hospitality as the changing interaction between host and guest, the writer adds the presence of another boy, Orly, Nina’s grandson and Daniel’s double. This triangulation allows the writer to resituate the implications of illegal migration from a boy’s point of view. This process of defamiliarization lays down the ethical background of the story since Daniel and Orly are more prone to look at the ethics of hospitality rather than the politics of it.