Canela Skin Daniela Hansson Guide

Hansson’s poetic technique relies on juxtaposing Swedish and Venezuelan sensory landscapes.

The Cartography of Belonging: Sensory Memory and Migrant Identity in Daniela Hansson’s “Canela Skin” canela skin daniela hansson

Daniela Hansson (b. 1991, Caracas) is a Venezuelan-Swedish poet whose work navigates the interstitial space between two cultures, two languages, and two climates. Her 2018 collection Ajo (Garlic) is a culinary and sensory journey through memory, family, and displacement. One of its central poems, “Canela Skin,” distills Hansson’s central preoccupation: how does the body—specifically the skin—remember a homeland that no longer exists as it once did? Her 2018 collection Ajo (Garlic) is a culinary

[Your Name] Course: [Course Name, e.g., Contemporary Latin American Literature] Date: [Current Date] It argues that Hansson uses the sensory motif

This paper examines Daniela Hansson’s poem “Canela Skin” (from her collection Ajo ). It argues that Hansson uses the sensory motif of canela (cinnamon) not merely as a description of skin tone, but as a complex metaphor for the construction of migrant identity. By analyzing the poem’s imagery, code-switching, and tactile language, this paper demonstrates how Hansson bridges her Venezuelan-Swedish heritage, transforming cultural dislocation into a site of creative redefinition.

Hansson writes primarily in Spanish but inserts Swedish words without italics or translation. This linguistic canela —a blending of tones—mirrors the skin’s blending. For example: “Min hud är kanel, säger jag till mig själv / pero el espejo devuelve otra cosa.” (“My skin is cinnamon, I tell myself / but the mirror returns something else.”) The switch between Swedish (“Min hud är kanel”) and Spanish (“pero el espejo”) enacts the divided self. The mirror (Swedish reality) contradicts the internal narrative (Spanish memory). Hansson refuses to resolve this tension; the poem ends not with synthesis, but with the speaker touching her own arm as if learning it anew.

| Venezuelan (Origin) | Swedish (Present) | |----------------------|-------------------| | Cinnamon, cocoa, mango | Snow, pine, licorice | | Warmth, open windows | Cold, double-glazed glass | | Spanish endearments | Swedish silence |