Claiming resentment: repressed emotions in Honduran literature on migration

Central American migration to the United States has been object of concern and a cause for heated debates for decades, yet the discussions around this topic in mainstream media often fail to include the perspective of the migrants themselves or discuss them with respect. In this article, I turn to literature from the Honduran diaspora not solely to consider the diasporic point of view, but to study the emotions attached to their experience. To be more precise, this article studies how resentment works within the context of Honduran displacements in the United States. I analyze the affects present in two Honduran contemporary novels, Roberto Quesada’s Nunca entres por Miami (Big Banana editores, 2002) and Oscar Estrada’s Invisibles (Casasola Editores, 2012), works which reveal a more complex emotional experience than what the news media and the work of social scientists can convey. Drawing from these two novels, I develop a theorization of resentment that considers both the negative and self-serving aspects of the emotion as well as the potential it has to create new spaces and realities. The resentment I find in the literature grows from a connection across generations and experiences, and that resentment can grant the migrants—or at least their descendants—the opportunity to make claims for justice.