Narrative Memory and Reconciliatory Genre Encounters in Norte (2011) by Edmundo Paz Soldán

Abstract

In Norte (2011) Edmundo Paz Soldán explores multiple perspectives of immigration from Latin America to the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries. The narratives of each of the four protagonists Michelle, Martín, Jesús, and Sergeant Fernández characterize complex relationships with the United States and with their own country of origin. Paz Soldán establishes an encounter between different genres to highlight Latin American’s migratory experience in the U.S., to examine the American prison system, the university, undocumented immigration, non-English speakers, violence, and border crossing. In this article, it will be argued that through different narratives memories this novel reflects, from an American space, upon 21st Latin American writing that is trying to find its own place in United States. The term narrative memory used in this analysis names the reconciliatory encounter between the literary past and present that regulates this novel, one that can be analyzed by its intertextual encounters: shuttling between references to the Hernández brothers’ comic books, vampire narratives by Laurell K. Hamilton, detective fiction, and Juan Rulfo’s “Luvina”.