Abstract
Rico uses postcolonial and transatlantic theories to present a new comparative reading of McCullers’ Ballad of the Sad Café and Nicholasa Mohr’s In Nueva York, a work of the best-known female writer of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Although Mohr has suggested that her writing was influenced by McCullers, there has heretofore been no comparative examination of the two writers, both of whom address similar historical periods, but from different epistemological perspectives. A list of Mohr’s characters not only suggests an influence, but signals a “writing back” to McCullers’ Ballad of the Sad Café. Moreover, in depicting the Puerto Rican neighborhood as a “village within a city,” [her term] Mohr’s narrative juxtaposes an urban setting and the imagery of a small town similar to McCullers’ Ballad.
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Rico, B.R. (2016). “The Ballad of Two Sad Cafés”: Nicholasa Mohr’s Postwar Narrative as ‘Writing Back’ to Carson McCullers. In: Graham-Bertolini, A., Kayser, C. (eds) Carson McCullers in the Twenty-First Century. American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40292-5_14
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