These twenty-plus short stories by leading Central American writers, by turns unsettling, absurd, tragic, exhilarating, and mystical, introduce us to the people behind the front-page horrors . . . A Torruban Indian loses a month's pay with a bad roll of the dice . . . The beautiful young Anita hunts beetles and cockroaches . . . To up its popularity rating, a government stages the first "Miss Underdeveloped Contest" . . . After the 1954 massacres in Guatemala, children hold a funeral for a bird . . . Reflecting a wide range of styles, these stories point in new directions while evincing the particular strength and courage it takes to write in a war-torn country.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Half these short stories from Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua powerfully evoke life in these countries--a good average for any book. Familiar authors are represented (Alegria, Ramirez), along with obscure but promising ones (Monteroso, Rovinski), and the varied subjects include baseball, entomology, and, of course, life during war. Because this region's culture has been eclipsed for so long by its politics, such a collection in English is long overdue. Yet stylistically the stories are so diverse that the impulse to identify a Central American school is thwarted. A historical introduction, concentrating on the Spanish Conquest, is informative but not the most appropriate approach to discussing writers born between 1918 and 1960.
- Ethan Bumas, formerly with the New Sch. for Social Research, New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Ethan Bumas, formerly with the New Sch. for Social Research, New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish
Original Language: Spanish
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Does the right wing write?,
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This review is from: And We Sold the Rain: Contemporary Fiction from Central America (Paperback)
These wonderful stories have been chosen to represent, according to the foreword, the clash between the indigenous culture and the third world. Perhaps black English speakers are not considered indigenous enough and there is nothing from Belize or about the Garifuana. Only one story is from Panama. It would be interesting to know if the right wing is literate at all. I get two problems with politically motivated fiction. The first is that fiction may be one-sided and over-simplify a complex situation. The second is that when terrible atrocities have been committed then writing about them in fiction can make us complacent. We are able to say "it is only a story"(does Arturo Armas really remember the events of 1954). That said, these are are all remarkable. The influence of the South American magic realists can be seen, especially in the title story and there is a tendency to idealize Indian life and the Popol Vul. I has only read Quesada and Ramirez previously and shall be seeking out more by the other writers.
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