Elvira Navarro -About the author!

 Today, I will be researching about an author by the name of Elvira Navarro, a very young Spanish author. She is not as well known as other writers, but she did win the Community of Madrid's Young Writers Award in 2004. Her two most popular published books are titled La Ciudad en Invierno (the city in winter) and La Ciudad Feliz (the happy city). 

La Ciudad en Invierno, published in 2007,  has a protagonist who is an unnamed woman. She moves from a town in the outskirts of Spain to Madrid, a huge popular city to attend university. The city is the motif in the novel: even though it appears to be welcoming and warm, it is really cold and unwelcoming. The protagonist is forced into a cycle of unstable living conditions and jobs. As she lives, she experiences more and meets more people who lives in the margins along with her. 

The story is interesting because it is told in a very minimalist style and captures the overwhelmingness of being a youthful woman in such an urban city. The novel is great because it incorporates parts of her life as well. After all, she is a young woman who was born in Madrid (odd coincidence!).  

Some themes she often incorporates in her novels include youthfulness, economic instability, loss of identity, liminality, and emotional detachment. 

Fun fact, she also has a blog about the different neighborhoods of Madrid and explores liminality/ undefined spaces. The blog is titled Periferia (outskirts). 

In all of her works, including the blog, lies of the common theme of liminality. I just wrote a paper in Honors American Literature about the transition of liminality from an anthropological lens to psychology, and then to literature and music. It is interesting to see this transition occur on a global scale. Liminality is the in-betweeness portrayed in a Rites of Passage. It is the state of being in between two states. The theme of loss of identity is significant when it comes to liminality. In a liminal space or mindset, you have lost your previous identity but have not yet obtained a new one. 

This is all I have for now! I rambled a lot but found her works interesting because of her application of liminality after learning so much about it in school. 

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