Hombres en Movimiento: Masculinidades españoles en los exilios y emigraciones, 1939–1999

Iker González-Allende

Hombres en movimiento: Masculinidades españolas en los exilios y emigraciones, 1939–1999, by Iker González-Allende, delivers the first sustained study of how the Spanish masculine identity, of both homosexual and heterosexual men, is impacted when men are compelled to leave their country. In it, González-­Allende examines the literary output of Spanish male authors over three periods of emigration and exile: the long Republican exile from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the emigration to Europe during the Spanish economic crisis of the 1960s, and the recent period of emigration of intellectuals to the US through the end of the twentieth century. Revealing and unpacking recurring patterns of isolation, insecurity, discrimination, and feminization in the host country, González-Allende argues that exile and emigration cause a crisis of powerlessness that can have a destabilizing effect on one’s masculinity. González-Allende also examines a countervailing trend among Spanish exiles and émigrés of these periods; that from the same crisis some achieve a greater sense of freedom and improve their socioeconomic standing. Each of the seven chapters analyzes a different Spanish male exile or émigré: the adolescent, the man at a crossroad, the idle man, the returning man, the working man, the onanist, and the academician. Works studied are likewise from a range of authors: Luis de Castresana, Juan José Domenchina, Juan Gil-Albert, Max Aub, Francisco Ayala, Patricio Chamizo, Víctor Canicio, Terenci Moix, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Javier Cercas.

“Hombres en movimiento is an original contribution to peninsular Hispanic studies from a perspective—that of masculinities and/in mobility—that opens a wider discussion on gender, exile, desire, class, and the nation in the Spanish twentieth century. Combining historical and sociological narratives of masculinity and migrations with close literary readings, this book offers an innovative anatomy of Spanish literary masculinities and of the gender anxieties associated with the achievement of literary authorship in displacement.”

— Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, Bangor University, UK

Iker González-Allende is Professor of Hispanic studies and program faculty of women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His areas of expertise are t­wentieth- to twenty-first-century Spanish literatures and cultures, the Spanish Civil War, Republican exile, Basque culture, and women’s and gender studies. He is the author of four books: the monograph Líneas de fuego: Género y nación en la narrativa española durante la Guerra Civil (1936–1939) , the edited volume El exilio vasco: Estudios en homenaje al profesor José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta, and the editions of Pilar de Zubiaurre’s works, titled Evocaciones: Artículos y diario (1909–1958) and Epistolario de Pilar de Zubiaurre (1906–1970). He also has published more than forty articles in books and academic journals, such as Hispania, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, Hispanic Research Journal, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Bulletin of Hispanic Studies.

PSRL 74. Paper. $45.00. e-Book available. 

Page last updated on 18 December 2018.

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