ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 demonstrates the persistence of a feeling of forced im/mobility in Dominican and Cuban portrayals of departure, through a focus on island residents’ drive to contemplate international travel and migration, the loss experienced by stayees, as well as the portrayal of frustrated and often tragic attempts to depart. Sources from island-based writers Caridad Atencio and Rolando Estevez; immigrants Leonardo Guevara Navarro, Juan Dicent, Eduardo Lantigua, and Leonardo Nin; as well as translocal writer Mylene Fernández, reveal the simultaneous banality and weight of departure in the Dominican and Cuban collective imaginaries from the point of view of those who stay behind or anticipate leaving themselves. In addition, I examine how literary works by Guevara, Nin, and Julissa Rivera Céspedes as well as Jorge Lendenborg’s documentary 60 millas al este bear witness to rafter journeys and mourning for those lost at sea.
