This chapter revisits
María
(1867) and Jorge Isaacs's biography in the context of the growing discourse amongst and between
national
novels and
world
literature. By doing so, the chapter emphasizes how imaginations of the nation are fed and produced in the novel by larger global designs, by histories of forced migration, exile, and diaspora. Reading the novel as the story of several diasporic communities seeking to legitimize themselves as newcomers in Valle del Cauca (the location of the novel),
María
expands and complicates literary geographies that tie reading practices to distinct national histories, showing how these are usually embedded in imperial histories.