The Four Free Walls of Paris: Nivaria Tejera’s Exiles in Espero la Noche Para Soñarte, Revolución

Abstract

Nivaria Tejera, who was born in Cuba in 1933, lived her childhood in the Canary Islands, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Her adolescence coincided with the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. Later, Tejera worked as a Cultural Attache to the Cuban Revolution in Paris and Rome. Since 1965, Tejera has been an exile in Paris. This Cuban-Canarian writer’s multiple exiles are revealed in Espero la noche para sonarte, Revolucion. My transatlantic reading of this text will establish Nivaria Tejera’s writing as a space of resistance in which the author subverts authority by trespassing political, national, literary, linguistic, gender, and genre borders.