Memoir and Identity in Welsh Patagonia

‘This fascinating study approaches the over-familiar, frequently romanticised, story of Welsh settlement in Patagonia from an entirely new and strikingly revealing angle. It draws on fresh evidence – in the form of personal memoirs spanning the century and a half since the “founding” moment – to track the complex politico-cultural process of negotiating identity as between Wales and Argentina that has preoccupied families of Welsh descent. The result is a sympathetic but hard-headed study of the different stages in the slow but inexorable process of accommodation to Argentinean “national” norms.’

-Professor M. Wynn Thomas, Swansea University

‘Geraldine Lublin is quite remarkable in being trilingual and perfectly literate in three languages. Her book is probably the best to date on the Patagonian Welsh … and Memoir and Identity is also one of the outstanding works on ethnic communities throughout Latin America, impressive for its depth, range and originality. Lublin analyses autobiography cross-generationally with admirable skill, revealing wide knowledge of theoretical works on ethnicity.’

-Professor David Rock, University of California

‘An absorbing, innovative and richly nuanced study of identity construction as Welsh and as Argentinian in twentieth century Patagonia, as revealed in four Welsh Patagonian memoirs. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Welsh experiences overseas and, more widely, in how settler descendants in plural societies negotiate their multiple identities.’

-Professor Bill Jones, Cardiff University