The Divine Husband and the creation of a transamericana subject

Abstract

This article reads Francisco Goldman's 2004 novel The Divine Husband as a transamerican foundation narrative. The author explains how Goldman's work challenges particular aspects of Latin American foundational texts, specifically via the relationships depicted between women's bodies and state institutions. In the character of Maria de las Nieves Moran, Goldman has created a woman who refuses to subject her body to any man or state. Moreover, the narrative structure of the work – focusing as it does on women's lives and women's stories – offers a rebuke to historical and literary accounts that have privileged men's lives and men's stories. Finally, in reading Goldman's work as a “transamerican” text, this article proposes a new perspective on the relationship between Central America and the United States. This perspective emphasizes the exchanges that have always taken place between different nations in the Americas, while it also argues for the inherent heterogeneity of Latina/o communities.