Coping with his master’s voice. Gardel’s lover by Mayra Santos-Febres
Abstract
The Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos-Febres has always shown a great interest in the expressions of popular music and the Caribbean rhythms in particular. Moreover, she has always been a defender of black women. In La amante de Gardel (2015), a novel that takes place in Puerto Rico, the protagonist is Micaela Thorné, a healer and the first black doctor. On her death bed she recalls her life and her fictitious romance with Carlos Gardel whose past is also narrated. We argue that Santos-Febres uses the character of Gardel to cope with different recurrent concerns in her work: Gardel as an expression of pan-latinism, Gardel as a popular myth, Gardel and the power of the voice, Gardel as a gramophone for the voiceless, Gardel as a male icon who subjugates women. In doing so, the novel offers more perspectives than a simple commercial exploitation of an icon.
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