New York City Spatialities: Practices of Displacement aAuster’s Sunset Park (2010) and Cleyvis Natera’s Neruda on the Park (2022)

This thesis aims at exploring the role of space in Paul Auster’s Sunset Park (2010) and Cleyvis Natera’s Neruda on the Park (2022). Considering that both novels take place in different New York City neighborhoods, the area of Sunset Park in Brooklyn and an imaginary neighborhood in Manhattan, emphasis will be placed on the examination of urban space representation in twenty first century American fiction. What the two authors showcase, with each one tackling urban space from a different perspective, with Auster being a white male American writer and Natera a female Dominican American writer, are the paradoxes and adversities hidden behind the façade of New York’s capitalist development. As regards the theoretical context the thesis will draw on, this is delineated by certain key voices in the field of space studies, such as Tim Creswell and Robert T. Tally. With space and place tackled as commodities, the two novels chosen for this thesis will focus on the elaboration of three key areas, those of gentrification, relocation and rebellion. Specifically, Auster’s (to be analyzed in Chapter One of the thesis) and Natera’s (to be analyzed in Chapter Two of the thesis) present a certain place, for example a family apartment, as a nonconformist space of rebellion against state power; while New York City can be enjoyed by the affluent with other vulnerable groups being dislocated due to the gentrification forces of change that have impacted on their community. Overall, the current thesis aspires to showcase that constant dislocation of vulnerable subjectivities within the borders of New York City’s space is a form of slow violence and therefore the writers’ choice of voicing those who are negatively affected becomes an activist act in favor of the right to housing and safety.