The Repeating City: Urban Space in Hispanic Caribbean Literature

Hispanic Caribbean literature reveals the city as a dynamic, multifaceted entity that transcends its historical roles as fortress or port. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century works on Havana (Cuba), San Juan (Puerto Rico), and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) depict urban spaces as sites of Utopian imaginaries, lived communities, and complex power negotiations, reflecting unequal development and cultural intersections with memory, desire, and national history. The study examines how these representations challenge totalizing narratives, offering nuanced accounts of urban cultures shaped by isolation and historical contexts.

Valdez, E. (2016). The Repeating City: Urban Space in Hispanic Caribbean Literature. The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City, 337–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_20