Canela Skin Daniela Hansson -

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

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.

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

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In one striking stanza, the speaker looks at her arm on a grey Stockholm winter day: “Bajo esta luz nórdica, mi canela se vuelve / un mapa sin ríos, una especia que nadie sabe nombrar.” (“Under this Nordic light, my cinnamon becomes / a riverless map, a spice no one knows how to name.”) The skin—once a source of maternal pride—becomes illegible. Hansson captures the migrant’s experience of semiotic loss : the body’s familiar signs (color, smell, associated warmth) no longer carry meaning in the new context.

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?