De la rupture à la symbiose entre deux cultures

Abstract

Immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon in Spain and the voices of first-generation immigrants or their descendants did not make themselves heard until the beginning of the 21st century. Born in the Moroccan Rif, Najat el Hachmi, has been living in Vic, a city located in the Province of Barcelona, since she was eight years old. Her first novel, L’últim patriarca, written in Calalan, was published in 2008. Through the portrait of the father, an authoritarian patriarch, and the memories of his daughter, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, we perceive the radical change of lifestyle that exile implies, the uprooting that ensues, along with an integration process which finally results in the symbiosis between the narrator’s two cultures.

Keywords

• Najat el Hachmi
• autofiction
• Moroccan immigrants
• orality
• symbiosis