You have a lot of freedom and choice in this course. I think that’s a good thing–and hope you do, too–but it can also pose problems. You have to make those choices! This is the first step in becoming an active reader… deciding what you will read.
My basic advice would be to read what seems to you interesting, what seems to align with your own tastes and concerns. On the other hand, I would also suggest that you choose at least a couple of texts that seem foreign and strange, that are perhaps not the kind of thing that you would naturally choose to read. Challenge yourself!
You may also want to think about how these texts go together. Do you, for instance, want to focus on women authors? Are you interested in a particular country? Do you want to follow a specific theme, treated in different ways in different texts?
To help you in your choice, as you ponder how to fill out your course contract, here are some comments. You may also find it helpful to look ahead at the course lectures, though these do not at all pretend to be exhaustive… nor do the notes below. There is always more in a text than you expect.
- Teresa de la Parra, Mama Blanca’s Memoirs. This is a required text, so you have no choice. But I think you’ll like it: it’s quite charming. It paints a fairly idyllic picture of life on a mid-nineteenth century sugar plantation, with all its odd customs and characters, seen through the eyes of a young girl (and her sisters). Themes include memory, modernization, childhood, and work (and play).
- Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs. This is the classic novel of the Mexican Revolution. But rather than trying to depict the entirety of what was a very messy and complex period in history, it focuses on a small band of revolutionaries as they wander through the north of the country, causing havoc and mayhem wherever they go. Themes: violence, ideology, politics, gender.
- Nellie Campobello, Cartucho. Another take on the Mexican Revolution, this short book is somewhere between novel, short stories, and autobiography, as Campobello draws on her own memories as a young girl in Northern Mexico during the height of the struggle between warring revolutionary factions. Her purpose is, in part, to rescue the vision of the vanquished: the followers of General Pancho Villa, whom official histories of the revolution would label merely violent bandits. Themes: violence, memory, childhood, story-telling.
- Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The first Nobel prizewinner on our list. Neruda is Latin America’s most famous (and probably favourite) poet. Though he was known later in life for his politics (he was a card-carrying Communist), these early poems, published when he was just nineteen, show another side to him: romantic and tender, with an edge of ambition. Even if you think you don’t like poetry, you will like this. Themes: love, affect, writing, gender.
- Gabriela Mistral, Madwomen. Another Nobel prizewinner. This collection of poems is more difficult than Neruda’s, perhaps because it shows the other side of things, less often visible and less easily articulated. The focus here is on women’s experience, often at the margins of society, not always of their own choice. Themes: gender, emotion, (non)sense, performance.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths. This is a required text, so you have no choice. Borges has been called the greatest twentieth-century writer never to have won the Nobel Prize. He is an acknowledged master of short stories that are often erudite, sometimes violent, bur also have moments of sly humour and satire. The stories can be dense, and reward re-reading. Themes: order, chaos, doubles, the power of the imagination.
- Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World. Carpentier was a Cuban novelist, but this book is about Haiti and the Haitian revolution. It is one of the many possible origins of so-called “magic realism,” as Carpentier gives voice to the oddities of Haitian history as seen from the point of view of the slaves who rose up against the French plantocracy. Contains some unforgettable scenes and set pieces. Themes: power, resistance, history, race.
- Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo. The best Mexican novel ever written? For some, perhaps even the greatest Latin American novel. Written by almost certainly the most important Latin American you never heard of. A man journeys to a remote village, looking for his father, but finds little more than memories and ghosts. This is a relatively short tale, but requires some concentration, as from the start not everything is as it seems, and the story is told in non-chronological fragments. Themes: death, life, power, ruins.
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is a required text, so you have no choice. It is no doubt the most famous novel written by Latin America’s most famous author (also a Nobel prizewinner). Famously described as “the first piece of literature since the book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” It is long, which is why were are taking two weeks to read it, but it is not a particularly difficult read–except that it can be hard keeping track of some of the characters, many of whom share the same names! The plot is an epic tale of a town (Macondo) and a quirky family who live in fear of producing a baby with the tail of a pig. Themes: magic, modernity, time, writing.
- Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star. The only book we are reading from Brazil. This is a short, experimental novel about a young woman, a migrant from the Northeast of Brazil to Rio Janeiro, where she lives a precarious existence, with almost nothing to her name. But the book is also about what it means to write about such a woman: the narrator is almost as much of a character as she is. It asks what we can ever know about a fictional character, or even about anyone else. Themes: poverty, life, death, narration.
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. Also another Nobel prizewinner. This is one of the prolific Vargas Llosa’s comic novels. An army office who is obsessed with order and duty is sent to the Peruvian Amazon to set up a “special service” of roving prostitutes to cater to the enlisted men, bored and far from their families. Meanwhile, a strange cult is spreading through the region. From bureaucratic order, chaos erupts. Themes: sex, gender, nature, religion.
- Rigoberta Menchú, I, Rigoberta Menchú. This is a required text, so you have no choice. Yet another Nobel prizewinner, though Menchú won the prize for Peace, rather than Literature. Here, in an edited version of conversations with anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, she tells of her life, the Mayan culture from which she comes, and the impact of the Guatemalan military’s genocidal campaign against the URNG rebels and everyone they believe to be associated with them. Powerful and sometimes traumatic. Themes: indigeneity, race, violence, resistance.
- Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star. A detective story of sorts, this is the tale of a poet turned pilot (perhaps pilot turned poet) who writes poems in the sky during the Pinochet regime in Chile. But the protagonist, who goes by other names, may well also be a serial killer, complicit in the murders that took place in Pinochet’s name. Many years later, this book’s narrator is asked to help track him down. This is a short and beautifully-written book that raises questions about the relationship between art and politics. Themes: aesthetics, history, violence, fascism.
- Giannina Braschi, Yo-Yo Boing!. I recommend this book to those who can read at least some Spanish. Though there is an English translation, it kind of misses the point, which is that this is a book that switches incessantly between English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Such code-switching reflects the Latino experience in the USA. Beyond the linguistic issues, you may find this a difficult book in that it does not have a conventional plot or characters. But it is well worth reading. Themes: language, the body, migration, writing.
- Pedro Lemebel, My Tender Matador. This novel combines political thriller with a gay love story, plus a smattering of satire, as a drag queen / transvestite finds herself wrapped up in a plot to kill Chile’s President Augusto Pinochet. At the same time, we also get to see snippets of the view from Pinochet’s side, hen-pecked by his ever talkative wife. It is not the shortest book, but it is a fairly easy read. Themes: sexuality, politics, dictatorship, subversion.
- Rita Indiana, Papi. This is a short but breathless account from the perspective of a young (8-year-old) girl of her father, a man who is in her eyes exciting and thrillingly generous–he has so much stuff, and he brings her so much stuff–but also fatally unreliable. Sometimes he keeps her waiting so long that everything grows mould around her. It’s also a portrait of a macho consumerist fantasy, set in and between Miami and the Dominican Republic. Themes: childhood, masculinity, sexuality, capitalism.
- Cristina Rivera Garza, The Taiga Syndrome. This short book is a mix of fairy tale (think Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood) and detective story, with a bit of horror thrown in. A man hires a woman to search for his wife, who has run off with her new lover to the Arctic forest known as the “taiga.” The woman goes, but strange sights and experiences await her: encounters with the locals, with wolves, with feral children. Themes: gender, disease, capitalism, language.
- Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream. You’ll find it hard to tear yourself away from this short novel, in which a mother and daughter go on vacation in the Argentine countryside, to find that danger and disease lurk in the environment around them. A gripping and rather horrifying story, told as a conversation between the dying mother and a very strange young boy. Themes: nature, capitalism, families, disease.
I hope all this helps you in your choice… but again, in the end this is your choice. Make it wisely!
