토마스 리베라의 『... 그리고 땅은 그를 삼키지 않았다』에 나타난 ‘기억하기’의 의미

초록

... And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomás Rivera is based on the author’s autobiographical experience of working on a farm as a Mexican migrant worker. This novel depicts the poor working conditions of seasonal migrant workers, the exploitation of child labor, and pervasive racism in Texas in the 1940s and 1950s. Rivera intended to document the lives of Mexican migrant workers which were forgotten in the American official history in this novel. This novel consists of fragmented 14 short stories and 13 vignettes which have no linear plot progression, breaking away from the traditional narrative method and a nameless narrator-protagonist tries to remember the ‘lost year’ following his steam-of-consciousness. This paper examines how ‘remembering’ of fragmented past images can be functioned as a narrative method in Rivera’s work which focuses on community voices and collective memories rather than on his or her individual growth and development. And it will explore the meaning of the storytelling about each life of Mexican migratory workers based on remembering and then delve into how their spoken language can be made as their community oral history and be read as the seed of communal love in this novel.

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