Afrodiasporic Female Automobility and Motel-Dwelling in Lesley Nneka Arimah's "Windfalls"

  1. Sandra García-Corte 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Oviedo
    info

    Universidad de Oviedo

    Oviedo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/006gksa02

Revista:
Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

ISSN: 1137-6368,  2386-4834

Año de publicación: 2021

Número: 64

Páginas: 73-92

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.26754/OJS_MISC/MJ.20216053 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Otras publicaciones en: Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

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Resumen

This article explores Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “Windfalls” (2017) from a literary mobility studies perspective, applying notions of mobility studies such as the driving-event, friction, arrhythmia, and stickiness for an in-depth textual analysis. Given that its female migrant protagonists are constantly on the move, tropes of mobility recur throughout the story. Cars, filling stations, parking lots, truckers, motels and the figure of the sojourner play a pivotal role in defining its Afrodiasporic protagonists’ postmigratory mobilities in the United States. Arimah’s depiction of automobility and motel-dwelling underlines her theme of a flawed mother-daughter relationship and their impossibility of achieving the promised American Dream. A close reading of the fictional travellers’ displacements uncovers a critical analysis of automobility and motel-dwelling as forms of subversion of hegemonic mothering. Particular attention is drawn to how the female protagonists’ motilities are determined by their racialised gendered bodies. By analysing the literary representation of concrete and tangible mobilities performed by female Nigerian migrants, this study acknowleges the importance of exploring a key characteristic of third-generation Afrodiasporic fiction which has mostly gone unnoticed.

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Información de financiación

The research underpinning this article has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FPU15/04245). Further support was provided by the project “Strangers and Cosmopolitans: Alternative Worlds in Contemporary Literatures” (RTI2018-097186-B-100) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the Spanish Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund, and by the R&D Programme of the Principado de Asturias, through the research group “Intersections” (GRUPIN IDI/2018/000167). I would also like to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Isabel Carrera Suárez and Emilia María Durán-Almarza, and to Anna-Leena Toivanen for her constant support, inspiration and help after having introduced me to the wonderful world of mobility studies. Special thanks to the anonymous peer-reviewers who have helped me improve this article.

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Fuente de los datos: Dialnet