Honour Where It's Due

A young lady in Spain, Najat el Hachmi, has been awarded as the best author of the year of Catalan Literature. During an interviewed she was asked by a reporter how she felt about the distinction placed on her above the rest of the typical female immigrants in Spain. She answered quietly but firmly that she was not an immigrant. She had come to Spain as a baby because her parents had done so, not her choice or decision.

She said she had always consider herself Catalan, having been brought up, educated, trained, and getting her official footing in accordance with Catalan standards and culture. She expressed her surprise and perplexity, that she was interviewed more for her origin of being descendent of Moroccan parentage by all media, than for her own merit of being a novelist who had won the honour for being the best, in Catalunya precisely, which was given for the quality of her work, not where she came from. That aspect is totally irrelevant.

Hasn't she adequately proven that she has broken the cultural and social barrier, which are more difficult to cross than the geographic boundary? Wouldn't it be just as absurd if ones says that the others didn't win the title despite being Catalans?

There is no such thing as a typical immigrant, female or not. They formed a part of the society as a collective of different people from different origins, geographically, socially and of different intellect level.

She is Catalan like all Catalans, her different background shared with her parents manifested in part in the richness of her novels. It's about time people learn to recognise the achievement and contribution of a person to the society only by it's merit, and drop the condescending adscription like a sentence.

Tags:BestAuthor,Immigrant,Socialboundary