Latin American Literature
Arenas, Reinaldo.
The Assault
. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Arenas has also written a series on the “secret” history of Cuba, “Pentagonia,” the last of which is
Before Night Falls
.
Arguedas, Jose Maria,
Deep Rivers
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978.
Understanding Arguedas is much enriched by the afterword, “Dreams and Magic in Jose Maria Arguedas,” by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Borges, Jose Luis,
Doctor Brodie’s Report
. New York: E.P.Dutton & Co., Inc., 1972. “The Gospel According to Mark,” pp. 13-22.
———,
Ficciones
. New York: Grove Press
,
1963.
Many collections of Borges are available in English.
Cortazar
,
Julio,
Blowup and Other Stories
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967.
Cortazar is another prolific writer of short stories who is much translated.
Fuentes, Carlos,
Aura
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965.
Fuentes is also widely available in English, though his books are largely novels.
Aura
about seventy five pages.
———,
The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World
. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
As a discussion of the conquest of Mexico and the stories of Quetzalcooatl and Malinche, this can be used as a companion text to Paz’,
The Labyrinth of Solitude
to get two points of view from Mexico’s most esteemed authors.
The Buried Mirror
is more successful when used as a reference rather than read as a whole. It contains a broad reaching history of Spain from prehistory and into the new world. It also has wonderful photographs.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel,
Leaf Storm and Other Stories
. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1979.
———,
No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories
. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1979.
———,
News of a Kidnapping
. New York: Knopf, 1997.
This most recent of his books is the story of the 1990 drug cartel kidnapping of major Colombian journalists.
———,
Strange Pilgrims
. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Garcia Marquez’ many works are available in English. He is the most widely read author of Latin America.
Garro, Elena, “The Fault of the Tlaxcaltecas.” In
Other Fires:Short Fiction by Latin American Women
, Alberto Manguel, Ed. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1989.
Neruda, Pablo,
Canto General
. Berkekey: University of California Press, 1991.
Most if not all of Neruda is available in English.
———,
Confieso que he vivido: memorias
/
Memories
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Neruda writes about his life, not dates and facts, but impressions and memories.
His own exile is described from such a perspective, and makes a good contrasting background to
Il Postino.
He also includes many reflections on Latin America, especially Peru, Mexico, Spain and Chile which add depth to reading
Canto General
.
Paz, Octavio,
The Labyrinth of Solitude
. New York: Grove Press, 1985.
Reading Paz is an intellectual thrill. He is passionate and far reaching in his reference. It is probably not accessible to average high school students, but invaluable to teachers. His interpretation of the myth of Malinche is personal and powerful.
Poirot, Luis,
Pablo Neruda: Absence and Presence
. New York: Norton and Co. 1990.
A beautiful volume of selected poems and photographs of Neruda’s collections.
Poniatowska, Elena,
Massacre in Mexico
. New York: Viking Press, 1975.
Student protests on the eve of the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico City ended in police violence against the protesters. Poniatowska has created a historical report using the comments and headlines of the events.
Quiroga, Horacio,
The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
———. “El desierto,” in
Horacio Quiroga: Todos los cuentos
. Madrid: CEP de la Biblioteca Nacional, 1993. pp. 489-504.”The Desert.” is published in Spanish only. We hope these earlier writers are made more accessible soon.
Rulfo, Juan,
The Burning Plain and Other Stories
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Collections of Latin American Fiction:
Agosin, Marjorie, Ed.,
Landscapes in a New Land: Short Fiction by Latin American Women
. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 1989.
Included are stories by Elena Poniatowska, Clarise Lispector and Silvina Ocampo.
Borges, Jose Luis, Silvina Ocampo, and A. Bioy Casares, Eds.,
The Book of Fantasy
. New York: Viking, 1988.
Though not strictly Latinamerican, this volume of international stories is fabulously full of fantasy selected as favorites by its editors.
Manguel, Alberto, Ed.,
Other Fires: Short Fiction by Latin American Women
. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1989.
Works by Clarice Lispector, Elena Poniatowska and Elena Garro are included.
Manguel has another collection titled
Black Water:the Book of Fantastic Literature
.
Menton, Seymour, Ed.,
The Spanish American Short Story
. Los Angeles, University of California, 1980.
All authors included are men. A critical anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century writers, ending with the decade of the Boom.
Poey, Delia, Ed.,
Out of the Mirrored Garden: New Fiction by Latin American Women
. Doubleday, 1996.
This collection includes stories by Elena Poniatowska and Rosario Ferre. There is another collection by Poey and Suarez,
Iguana Dreams: New Latino Fiction
. Harper Collins, 1992.
Erro-Peralta, Nora and Caridad Silva Nunez, Eds.,
Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women’s Fiction
. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1991.
Included are stories by Rosario Ferre, Elena Poniatowska and Elena Garro.
Santiago, Roberto, Ed.,
Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings—An Anthology
. Ballantine Books, 1995.
This volume represents a statement of the identity of Puerto Rico to the rest of the world. What do we mean by Puerto Rican culture, who is Puerto Rican, what is Puerto Rico are all answered in the writings of forty authors, from Julia de Burgos to Geraldo Rivera. The writings are essays, fiction, poetry, and memories about the politics and identity and prejudice of what it means to these individuals to be Puerto Rican. Every teacher in New Haven should have this book. Because it is Puerto Rican and includes mainland English writers and island Spanish writers, it could be considered Latino or Latin American writing.
Santos, Rosario, Ed.,
And We Sold the Rain: Contemporary Fiction from Central America
. Seven Stories Press, 1988.
The authors of these stories are less known than those in some of the other collections. Themes of the stories reflect life in war torn Central America.
Tapscott, Stephen, Ed.,
Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
This is an excellent bilingual collection of Latin American poetry. It includes over four hundred poems by eighty five poets.
Latino and Caribbean Literature:
Alvarez, Julia,
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents
. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991.
———.
In the Time of Butterflies
. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1994.
This is available in Spanish,
En el tiempo de las mariposas
. Santo Domingo, 1995. It is my favorite of Alvarez’ books, a fictional history of four sisters who resist the Trujillo regime in Santo Domingo.
Anaya, Rudolfo,
Bless Me, Ultima
. Berkekey, CA: Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol International Publishers, 1972.
This is a novel you could read for no reason at all. A boy comes of age between the sheepherder culture of his father and the village culture of his mother, under the mentorship of Ultima, the
curandera
.
———,
Lord of the Dawn: The Legend of Quetzalcooatl
. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.
Anaya’s poetic and powerful writing lends itself to this story of the Aztec search for the promised land.
Anzaldua, Gloria,
Borderlands, La Frontera
. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987.
Anzaldua writes often in
Spanglish
, using the language itself to express her sense of neither belonging nor not belonging to the place on earth where she was planted.
Becera de Jenkins, Lyll,
The Honorable Prison
. New York: E.P.Dutton, 1988.
This is a children’s book about a girl whose family is under house arrest in Latin America. I find it useful in helping students identify with a child’s understanding of adult political resistance.
Cisneros, Sandra,
The House on Mango Street
. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
Cisneros work is deceptively simple. It can be read one story at a time as prose poetry or as a novel with a devastating reality as the sum of the very short passages.
Danticat, Edwidge,
Breath, Eyes, Memory
. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
———,
Krik? Krak!
New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Danticott, a professor of French Literature, is Haitian, lives in the States, and writes in English of a very Latin American childhood in Haiti.
Diaz, Junot,
Drown
. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996.
Powerful and painfully honest; when you read Junot you know why he is a best seller.
Duran, Roberto, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Gustavo Poerez Firmat, Eds.,
Triple Crown: Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American Poetry
. Tempe, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1987.
Garcia, Cristina,
Dreaming in Cuban
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992
This is also available in Spanish:
Sonar en Cubano
. New York: Ballentine Books, 1994.
It seems a Spanish translation would lose some of a story about Cuban (Spanish) being the language of her unconscious.
Gonzalez, Ray, Ed.,
After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties
. Boston: David R. Godine, 1992.
Gonzales, Rodolfo,
Yo soy Joaquin
. Denver: 1967.
Milligan, Bryce, Mary Guerrero Milligan, and Angela de Hoyas, Eds.,
Daughters of the Sun
. New York:: Riverhead Books, 1995.
The fifth sun is the Aztec world, yet this collection includes works by authors of Caribbean extraction as well as Mexican. Many authors are familiar, for example Gloria Anzaldua, Rosario Ferre and Julia Alvarez. The introduction and notes include some historical background and explanations of the terms chicano, latino, and hispana.
Ortiz Cofer, Judith,
An Island Like You
. New York, Orchard Books, 1995.
Much of Ortiz Cofer’s work is valuable in the classroom.
An Island Like You
is easy access for middle students to Latino literature.
Rebolledo, Tey Diana and Eliana S. Rivero, Eds.,
Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature
. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993.
If you only buy one collection of chicana literature, buy this one. It includes thirty five pages of introduction and history of chicana writing, and photographs of many writers, historical when available. The writings begin with foremothers, the earliest dated 1877, dictated by Dona Eulalia Perez. The divisions include self and identity, self and others, myths and archetypes, writers. The final division is celebrations, with entries by Lorna Dee Cervantes, Pat Mora, Alma Villanueva, among others.
Santiago, Esmeralda,
When I Was Puerto Rican
. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1993.
Texts: Short Story Collections
Antologia Comunicativa
, Volumines 3,4,&5. Bogota: Editorial Norma, SA, 1988.
Dime Dos
: Lexington, MS: D.C.Heath and Co., 1994.
Galeria Hispanica
. New York: McGraw Hill, 1971.
Joyas de Lectura
. Skokie, IL: National Textbook Company, 1979.
Kupferschmid, Gene S., Ed.,
Al Tanto: Catorce cuentos contemporaneos
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
Latino Caribbean Literature
. Paramus, NJ: Globe Fearon Educational Publishers.
Mexican American Lterature
. Paramus, NJ: Globe Fearon Educational Publishers.
Muckley, Robert L. and Eduardo E. Vargas, Eds.,
Cuentos Puertorriquenos
. Chicago: National Textbook Co., 1974.
Realidad y fantasia
. New York: Amsco School Publications, Inc., 1984.
Selecciones Literarias
. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Reference:
Beardsell, Peter R.,
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte
. London: Grant and Cutler, 1986.
Despite the title, the text is in English, and is a critical guide to Quiroga. His analysis of “The Decapitated Chicken” will prove worth the effort to find the book.
Carpentier, Alejo.
The Kingdom of this World
. New York, Knopf, 1957.
The Spanish edition contains a prologue on magic realism. Unfortunately it is not in the English edition. Few of Carpentier’s works are available in English, and all are out of print. He is the great master of magic realism. We need new editions.
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal,
The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico
. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
Diaz de Castillo was one of Cortes troops. He writes an eyewitness account of the conquest. He states that he knew La Malinche, that he knew her mother. He is potentially the most accurate source on the facts behind the conflicting legends on La Malinche, but with the caution that he wrote his memoirs fifty years after the conquest.
Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto.
The Pilgrim at Home
. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Gonzales Echevarria may be Carpentier’ greatest critic and admirer. He has also led several seminars in the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.
Hernandez, Felisberto,
Piano Stories
. New York: Arsilio Publishers, 1993.
In the introductions and prefaces are three statements about Hernandez’ style of fantastic writing.
Leon Portilla, Miguel.
Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
These translations from Nahuatl to Spanish to English are the writings of Aztec witnesses to the conquest. I recommend using
Broken Spears
with Bernal Diaz de Castillo’s writings as witness from the Spaniard ‘s side.
Monegal, Emir Rodriguez,
Borges: a Reader
. New York: Dutton, 1981.
Especially pertinent are the essays on “The Argentine Writer and Tradition” and “Magic and the Art of Narrative.”
Neimark, Anne M.,
Che!
New York: J.B.Lippencott, 1989.
An informative children’s biography of Che Guevara.107 pages; good bibliography.
Robinson, Cecil.
Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest in American Literature
. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977.
Robinson offers a factual account of the origins of La Malinche, largely taken from Diaz de Castillo. His interpretation of her influence on the conquest is compassionate and respectful.
Rochman, Hazel,
Against Borders: Promoting Books for a Multicultural World
. Chicago: American Library Association, 1993.
As
a guide to Latino literature for children, this is an invaluable book. She annotates her selections, and includes suggested appropriate grade levels. I hope she updates her curriculum frequently, as minority literature is a fast growing market. For example, she lists one of Judith Ortiz Cofer’s books, her non-fiction about growing up Puerto Rican. Seven of her books are listed in the Yale catalogue. Perhaps the best is the selection of short stories, titled
An Island Like You
.
Santi, Enrico Mario,
Pablo Neruda: the Politics of Prophecy
. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
I found critical works on Neruda and others to be helpful.
Shaw, Donald L.,
Alejo Carpentier
. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.
I found this second reference on Carpentier useful. It is an overview of all of his published fiction. Shaw created a two page chronology of Carpentier’s life and writings which saves time in research. Each of Carpentier’s works is discussed in very un-Carpentierian chronology. For those who don’t read Spanish, it is a good source to understand what Carpentier said about the “marvelous real” and connections with European surrealism.
Stavens, Han,
Julio Cortazar: A Study of the Short Fiction
. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996.
Interpretations of Cortazar’s individual stories, including “Bestiary” and “House Taken Over,” can be found by using the index.
Stoll, Anita K., Ed.
A Different Reality: Studies on the Works of Elena Garro
. Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press, 1990.
Garro is a writer rediscovered. This anthology is interesting in its own right, particularly in the chapter of Garro’s understanding of Malinche in contrast to that of her former husband Octavio Paz. She, too, needs translation.
Todorov, Tzvetlan,
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve, 1973.
Published in French as
Introduction a la litterature fantastique
, this is a very academic, very intellectual reference to the understanding of what fantastic is in literature, without reference to any of the writers included in this study. Todorov defines fantastic literature as to including the participation of the reader in the question of the nature of the uncanny events of the story: real or imaginary? The reader’s suspension of judgement is essential to fantastic literature.