Oikos and the “Other”: Humanizing the Immigrant in Donato Ndongo's El metro

Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo is one of the most outstanding Hispano–African voices in contemporary literature. Born in Niefang, Spanish Guinea, in 1950, he has worked as a journalist, lectured, and taught throughout Europe and the United States. He currently resides in Murcia, Spain, unable to return to Equatorial Guinea for political reasons. ¹ His novelistic production, while not extensive, has been well received by critics as an important emerging voice in the contemporary Spanish literary canon, and his academic work is an invaluable contribution to the study of Equatorial Guinea’s history and literature. ² Ndongo’s status as one of the preeminent Hispano–African authors contributes a valuable authorial viewpoint to Spanish letters; as a postcolonial subject writing in the colonial language—Spanish—he represents an important element of the growing cultural diversity in Peninsular literature.