Absence and Presence: Silence and Violence in Edurne Portela’s Mejor la ausencia

• Autores: Ellen C. Mayock
• Localización: Romance notes, ISSN 0035-7995, Vol. 64, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 187-198
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Edurne Portela has written both scholarly and creative works that focus on violence in general, domestic violence in and among families, and the backdrop of political violence, especially in the context of unresolved strife in Spain’s Basque country of the 1980s. Portela’s 2016 non-fiction book, El eco de los disparos(“ Echoes of Gunshots”; my translation), examines narrative and film produced by Basque writers and directors who focus on the political violence surrounding both the Franco regime and Basque nationalism. Her 2017 novel, Mejor la ausencia(“ Let’s Just Be Absent”; my translation), addresses many of the same themes of the non-fiction work but narrates the story of a family struggling with a father’s violence (as an extension of his participation in Basque political violence), a mother’s acceptance, and four children’s sense of fragmentation. This article uses theories of domestic violence (especially cycles of domestic violence) and political/state brutality (especially as related to the Basque context) to understand the ways in which Portela portrays aggression while also highlighting the emerging strength of the young female protagonist of this Bildungsroman.