Entrusted: The Poetics of Family in Monique Urza’s The Deep Blue Memory

Abstract: Nevada author Monique Urza’s 1993 novel, The Deep Blue Memory, is perhaps the most significant work of Basque-American fiction since her father, Robert Laxalt, published Sweet Promised Land in 1957. I argue that Urza’s work should be read in dialogue with her father’s tale of Basque immigration to the west, as it is particularly and powerfully attuned to the ways in which issues of transgenerational Basque-American identity may be mediated through questions of gender.