‘Cando chegamos ô Unai Estei’ (When We Arrived in the USA): Literary Representations of Galician Migration to New York in the First Half of the 20th Century

In a recent study, James D. Rodríguez (2014) has described Spanish immigrants in the USA as ‘invisible’, due to the lack of academic attention they have traditionally received. As pointed out by Nancy Pérez Rey (2001), the majority of these migrants have been of Galician origin. Galicians in the United States have therefore suffered from a double invisibility, and only in the past few years have academic studies paid close attention to their presence in this country, and particularly in their preferred destination, New York (Pérez Rey 2003 & 2008; Alonso 2006; Varela Lago 2008; Vilar Álvarez 2009). Drawing on this body of work, and focusing on texts by Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, Ernesto Guerra da Cal and Luís Seoane, the present chapter will examine the literary representations of Galician migrants in this city produced by Galician exiles in the first half of the 20th century. The study of these texts will show the challenges posed by competing identities (Spanish, Hispanic, migrant) to the articulation of Galician identity in New York and will explore the tension between visibility and invisibility in their representation of Galician migration to this city.