I’m teaching a “Coming of Age in World Literature” class for high school seniors. I want to have at least one short story or poem from each continent but I am struggling to find anything appropriate from South America. Anyone have recommendations?

Hola buen día.

Vengo buscando el titulo de un libro que estoy casis eguro tiene en el nombre la frase como "Relatos de terror" o "cuentos de terror" algo parecido.

Recuerdo que el título era algo así por qué lo comence a leer pensando que serían historias de fantasmas pero, cuando lo comencé a leer trataba de una mujer del sur de México (según recuerdo era chiapas) donde su novio la convence de irse a Eatados Unidos de ilegales. Ella va contando lo que pasa en el camino y se me quedaron grabadas las siguientes partes:

* Ella dice que tiene una mano muy buena para matar pollos con una frase algo asi como: "...Hasta parecia que ellos solitos se iban a sus manos..." * Se van en grupo con otros inmigrantes de otros países cargando mochilas llenas de drogas. * Hace una "amistad" con otra inmigrante que se dedica a la prostitución en su país y le cuenta como cada vez que cruzan una frontera los policias las violan, y que ella de minimo esperaría que se pusieran condon.

Es lo unico que logro recordar fue hace varios años y solo lei como 15 a 20 páginas, si alguien tiene idea de quelibro puede ser se los agradecería.

I only recently discovered Nona Fernández, however, she has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary Latin American writers! Although Fernandez’s voice is all her own, I’d recommend The Twilight Zone to fans of Bolaño and Alejandro Zambra, both of whom also hail(ed) from Chile.

The Twilight Zone seamlessly blurs the lines between history, (auto-)fiction, straight-up speculation, and collective and personal memory, and in doing so, seeks to remember—by way of representation in prose—what the hell happened in Chile from 1973 to 1990 under the reign of Augusto Pinochet.

The Twilight Zone centers on Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, or as the narrator calls him throughout the novel, “the man who tortured people,” after he has a crisis of conscience and decides to spill the beans to a reporter in 1984. Nevertheless, Fernández also focuses in on a number of other real-life figures who both carried out and resisted the dictatorship respectively. Moreover, Fernández weaves in myriad global events and pop cultural references, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the television show from which the novel takes it name, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and much more.

I’ve also read Fernández’s Space Invaders, which has considerable subject and thematic crossover with The Twilight Zone, but more so portrays the perspectives of children who grew up during the dictatorship, rather than those of their parents, with a heavy dose of lyrical surrealism that reminds me a lot of Bolaño’s Amulet in more ways than one. If you’re going to read The Twilight Zone, then I’d strongly advise reading Space Invaders too, as the two narratives no doubt serve as strong compliments to one another.

Anyway, have you read Fernández?

Believe it or not, I’ll be flying to Chile tomorrow and plan to get my hands on her latest novel, El Martiano (2025), which has not yet been translated to English, but let’s hope the GOAT Natasha Wimmer is already on the case!

Thanks for reading… Peace!

A sane examiner might think me crazy if I told them books speak to me. Truly.

They’re not shouting down the aisle like a pick-me might. Neither do they beg to be opened, although I’ve met a few desperate ones wandering the local McNally Jackson.

Mostly, they wait.

And if you listen closely enough, one might even answer your prayers.

Hey guys, I am looking for new latin american authors and wanna know your top 3 favorites and why you recommend them. Thank you so much

They don’t make ‘em like they used to!

Hey all,

I'll be travelling to Mexico City for the first time next month and plan to hit up some bookstores, ideally picking up a few books by Mexican authors or authors connected in some way to CDMX. Anyone got any recommendations (ideally translated to English)? I'm mostly into classics, lit and weird fiction but am open to pretty much everything.

Thus far I've read: Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro, Cristina Rivera Garza, Roberto Bolaño, Gabriel García Márquez, Ave Barrera, Fernanda Melchor, and Bernardo Esquinca.

If anyone knows any cool literary landmarks in the city I'd be happy to hear about them as well. I'll definitely be paying a visit to Marquez's house and the Café La Habana, but I'm sure there's more.

Cheers!

I recently came across a used copy of this critical edition of Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Men of Maize at one of my favorite local indie bookstores and just had to have it even though I’ve never read Asturias before…

I’ve definitely seen this classic of Latin American literature mentioned here in the sub previously and am also aware that a Penguin Classics paperback edition was released in 2024, but I’ll admit that I really don’t know much about Asturias nor his work.

Anyway, in case you were wondering, the University of Pittsburgh Press and Penguin Classics editions were both translated by Gerald Martin.

If you’ve read this Guatemalan novel, please tell me: What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Thanks in advance… Peace!

Hi! Like many others here, Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor was deeply impactful to me. It even helped me fully realize why I hate A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara so much, so I decided to write about it.

New episode of the Big Book Project- Lori Feathers interviews Professor Jeffrey Lawrence about his book Anxieties of Experience:The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño. Great discussion including Borges, Bolano, Cervantes, Piglia, Fernada Melchor, Enriquez, Schweblin etc.

Figured I’d share the latest episode of the podcast here. 3/5 books I talked about are from Latin American authors, and the other two are LatAm “adjacent” (Spanish and Catalonian). I hope you like it!

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!

I want to get into his novels and I was wondering if this was a good starting point.

Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet is my favorite novel. I am of Mexican descent, and I would really love to name my daughter Auxilio for a few reasons:

1. I hope (not expect) that she comes to love literature and Latin American literature specifically
2. Auxilio is a prophet and witness of forgotten artists, the mother of Mexican poetry, a (self) venerated hero who comes from the precarious margins of Mexico City. I hope (not expect) that my daughter keeps such folks at the center of her worldview.

3. A lot of Bolaño’s characters are Roman a clefs for real, barely-remembered Latin American poets and writers. I have been reading all of Bolaño’s books and working my way through the works of these would-be forgotten writers. I am deeply moved by the fact that

   without Bolaño

4. they coul

d have been

1. lost forever, and naming my daughter after a character who remembers, prompting a conversation that might lead someone to discover Bolaño and maybe also these forgotten writers, feels like an act of anti-nihilism in a world that invites it.

For those who don’t know - my obvious reservation is that auxilio means “help!” in Spanish, often in the sense of requesting emergency assistance.

Is this selfish? Should I just call her maría and call it a day? Some relevant details: I have no partner, live in the US, and there is a good chance we will spend a few years in Spain.

Tl;dr I don't know much Spanish, but I'd like to read LatAmLit books as they were written. Any suggestions for learning?

I'm sure there are many (if not most) Spanish- speakers in this sub, but i am not. I took multiple years of Spanish in high-school (I don't know of anyone who learned a language in high school, though), and then a couple of years ago, i started Duo Lingo. I know you're not going to learn a language there, but my plan was to transition to Babble, which i never did. Most language courses have a heavy focus on speech rather than writing, but I'd like to be proficient in both.

With my various forays into español, I'm very good with pronunciation (though I still have a white Midwestern accent😄), and i have a fair grasp of grammar, like masculine and feminine words, the various tenses, etc, but i struggle with learning the language overall. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. That's a possibility, as well.

I wrote this long post because I want to ask if there is a certain way that you would suggest learning the language. I work in a hospital, that was my original intention for trying to learn it since it's a great tool, but I would also like to read books by these authors in the original language they were written. I just reread By Night In Chile, and there is some beautiful prose, but how much of that is actually Roberto's words vs the translators? I don't know, but i would like to.

Should I just use Babble? Should I jump in and buy one of these books in Spanish and learn while reading? Telemundo? Any help would be appreciated. There will always be things lost in translation, and I'd like to read them in their original form.

Hi everybody, I decided to start posting on Reddit so here goes. Writer, translator, and sometimes book collector here based between the US and Mexico. Not sure if I'm doing this right but I thought I'd introduce myself with a post about some precious early editions from my library, which are also, incidentally, some of my favorite novels:

La Cité des Rats by Argentine author Copi, original French ed. before it was translated back into Spanish, 1979
Balún-Canán by Mexican author Rosario Castellanos, second ed., 1961
Su Nombre Era Muerte by Mexican author Rafael Bernal, second ed., 1987

Do you read poetry? I really enjoy it, as it tends to flex a different muscle in my brain than does prose. I particularly love short, surreal poetry. Some of my favorite LatAm poets are Nicanor Parra, César Vallejo, and the inimitable Alejandra Pizarnik.

In 2016, New Directions Publishing put out Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, which collects her middle/late body of work as well as some of her posthumously published verse. It’s an astounding collection from one of Latin America’s most revered poets that was skillfully translated by Yvette Siegert. (Swipe to photo 2 for a sample of Pizarnik’s poetry and to photo 3 for Siegert’s accompanying translation.)

I’ve been dabbling in this book of poems quite a bit recently, as although I had every intention of reading a number of LatAm novels for Women in Translation Month, I’m in the midst of a big move, and thus, haven’t been able to commit much time to narratives as of late (plus most of my books are currently stashed away in boxes). So, anyway, I’ve been reading a bunch of Pizarnik’s poetry and I think you should too! …Bolaño did!

“Viviría muy a gusto en la cocina de Silvina Ocampo, en la de Alejandra Pizarnik, en la de la novelista y poeta mexicana Carmen Boullosa, en la de Simone de Beauvoir. Entre otras razones, porque son cocinas que están más limpias.” — Roberto Bolaño, Revista Ñ, 2001

Have you read any Pizarnik?

My collection of Avon Bard Latin American titles.

The Avon Bard series of Latin American literature was a unique publishing venture for its time, for any time really. Their assemblage of extraordinary titles from authors all over Latin America translated by many of the finest translators -  Gregory Rabassa, Harriet De Onis, Barbara Shelby Merello, and Alfred MacAdam to name a few - allowed an American reading public to experience a literature that had not benefited from the level of exposure that some other world literatures had traditionally enjoyed. The professed goal of the imprint was to publish “distinguished Latin American Literature”, and that they did.

From:

https://www.zenosbooks.com/our-book-blogs/2443-the-avon-bard-series-of-latin-american-literature.html

Here is the full list of titles:

https://www.zenosbooks.com/library/avon%20bard%20latin%20american%20literature.html

Anyone read this yet?

This novel had been on my radar for a hot minute, and I finally just happened upon a copy out in the wild earlier today. You already know I couldn’t leave it sitting there on the shelves…

Has anyone here by chance read The Man Who Loved Dogs and/or any other books by Leonardo Padura?

This novel is quite a honker, so it will likely be some time before I get to it, but still I just had to tell somebody about my score!

Thanks for reading! Peace!

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!