A Galician Werewolf in New York: Migration and Transgressive Femininity in Claudio Rodríguez Fer’s ‘A muller loba’

Galicia is inseparable from the experience of emigration and exile, and as has been extensively examined, mobility has played a major role in Galician culture and society. Most studies have identified the Galician diaspora with Latin America, but other locations such as London have only recently begun to receive critical attention. The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of a new understanding of this phenomenon by focusing on the literary representation of Galician emigration in New York, and by taking as a case study Claudio Rodríguez Fer’s short story ‘A muller loba’. Rodríguez Fer’s text updates the myth of the werewolf (which has a prominent presence in Galician literature) not only by taking this legend to New York, but also by subverting the submissive role played by women in this tradition. On the contrary, Ruth (the protagonist) represents an independent and rebellious femininity, which simultaneously challenges patriarchy, and therefore an essentialist view of the nation, and embodies the resistance of local identities in the global age. By paying special attention to the tension between the local and the global as it is reflected in this short story, and following recent and innovative studies such as those by Colmeiro (2009), Hooper (2011) and Romero (2012), this article will suggest a more extensive approach to the experience of displacement in the context of Galician emigration.