Inês Cordeiro Silva Dias (Universidad de Puerto Rico)
La Belleza Bruta (2008), by Francisco Font Acevedo, is a collection of short stories set in contemporary San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico. All the stories are interconnected through some character or detail, forming a mosaic of San Juan’s urban life.
The characters we find in these short stories are all marginal in some ways. They may be criminals, prostitutes, or simply people who refused to accept the rules of this urban (dis)order. All these characters try to negotiate their (im)possible place in the urban landscape, between crime, social alienation, private condominiums and huge malls, and while some of them where born in marginality, others choose it as a way to escape the standardization of urban life.
In my paper I will be discussing these different forms of marginality, the way characters negotiate their identity and their place in social life within the urban landscape of San Juan, as well as how they (de)construct the urban cosmos through their marginality. I will also be using Kristeva’s notion of abjection to work on the relationship of these marginal characters with the city, its other inhabitants, and the reader.
The characters we find in these short stories are all marginal in some ways. They may be criminals, prostitutes, or simply people who refused to accept the rules of this urban (dis)order. All these characters try to negotiate their (im)possible place in the urban landscape, between crime, social alienation, private condominiums and huge malls, and while some of them where born in marginality, others choose it as a way to escape the standardization of urban life.
In my paper I will be discussing these different forms of marginality, the way characters negotiate their identity and their place in social life within the urban landscape of San Juan, as well as how they (de)construct the urban cosmos through their marginality. I will also be using Kristeva’s notion of abjection to work on the relationship of these marginal characters with the city, its other inhabitants, and the reader.
