Body of Reconciliation: Aida Petrinera Cheng’s Journey in Como un mensajero tuyo by Mayra Montero

• In Event: Afro-Asia in Latin America: Religion, Literature, and Film

Abstract

According to Alejo Carpentier, Fernando Ortiz and Antonio Benítez Rojo, among others, the Hispanic Caribbean finds its “Caribeanness” through its African heritage. Though this paper won’t argue with this principle, I will add that other influences, as well, must be taken into account. Traditionally, the transculturation that Ortiz describes considers the African, European and Indigenous contribution. Nevertheless, just as any other island in the Caribbean, many other migrations helped shape the culture and the national view of the islands. In Cuba, as it is narrated in Mayra Montero’s Como un mensajero tuyo, Chinese believes and world view integrated and collaborated with European and African knowledge to inscribe a particular sensibility that has not been explored enough. In this paper, I will discuss how the body of Aida Petrinera Cheng, the novel’s main character, throughout her journey with Enrico Caruso, incarnates and performs the reconciliation of knowledge between the African, Chinese and European. By embodying her as a “mulata china”, Montero, from her home in Puerto Rico, is able to imagine a new Cuban identity that connects with the rest of the Caribbean and speaks to its historical journey: one that is recreated through its ethnical complexities, contradictions and its constant need and search of definition.

Author

• Dania E Abreu, Trinity University