Canela Skin Daniela Hansson -

“Canela Skin” is not a poem about race in a fixed sense, but about sensorial citizenship . Daniela Hansson redefines identity as an ongoing, tactile negotiation—a skin that is both bark and spice, both foreign and familiar. In an era of global migration, “Canela Skin” offers a lyrical model for living with unhealed divides: not by erasing difference, but by learning to smell the cinnamon even in the snow.

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

[Your Name] Course: [Course Name, e.g., Contemporary Latin American Literature] Date: [Current Date] “Canela Skin” is not a poem about race

| Venezuelan (Origin) | Swedish (Present) | |----------------------|-------------------| | Cinnamon, cocoa, mango | Snow, pine, licorice | | Warmth, open windows | Cold, double-glazed glass | | Spanish endearments | Swedish silence | The Cartography of Belonging: Sensory Memory and Migrant

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

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?