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September's Subject of the Month
Latin American Literature
Selectors: Amie Fuentes and Ida Martinez
National Hispanic Heritage Month happens every year from September 15th to October 15th. This year join us on our journey through the rich and diverse literary landscapes of Latin America, where vibrant cultures, histories, and voices converge. Discover magical realism, poignant social commentary, and profound reflections on identity, all woven into the fabric of literary masterpieces.
Latin American Boom
The Latin American Literature Boom, a transformative literary movement spanning from the 1960s to the 1970s, marked a remarkable eruption of creative expression and cultural exploration in the region. Emerging against a backdrop of political and social upheaval, this literary phenomenon showcased the works of authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes, who crafted narratives deeply intertwined with the unique complexities of Latin American reality.
The Latin American Literature Boom not only brought international recognition to the region's authors but also spotlighted themes of identity, political oppression, and social inequality. Their profound impact continues to resonate, influencing subsequent generations of writers and fostering a richer understanding of the intricate tapestry of Latin American life and thought.
This is a list of some of the most prominent authors associated with the Latin American Literature Boom:
- Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
- Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
- Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
- Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
- Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
- Jose Donoso (Chile)
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba)
- Isabel Allende (Chile)
- José Lezama Lima (Cuba)
- Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay)
- Ernesto Sabato (Argentina)
These authors, among others, played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of Latin American literature during the boom period and beyond. For further perspective see the article, "The 'Forgotten' Women Writers of the Latin American Boom."
These are a few of the selected "boom" novels we've chosen to feature. Each of these authors have a vast catalog that would be impossible to showcase fully. We encourage you to dive into your own interests and read what sounds interesting to you. Our Latino/a and Latin American Studies Librarian, Ida Martinez, has put together a readers advisory section on one of her research guides that provides even more examples of Latin American Literature.
All of the "boom" novels listed below can be found in Wayne State Libraries. Click on the Michigan eLibrary Catalog (MeLCat) MEL icon to see if your local library also has a copy for you to pick up or get delivered to campus.
- Labyrinths by Readers are invited to take a new look at "Labyrinths," the classic by Latin America's finest writer of the 20th century--a true literary sensation.
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- One Hundred Years of Solitude by From the Nobel Prize winning novelist, this epic tale of seven generations of the Buendia family spans a hundred years of Latin American history. The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love--in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism." One of the most significant works in the Spanish literary canon, Pablo Neruda called it "The greatest revelation in the Spanish language since Don Quixote."
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- Hopscotch by "Cortazar's masterpiece ... The first great novel of Spanish America" (The Times Literary Supplement) * Winner of the National Book Award for Translation in 1967, translated by Gregory Rabassa Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. Hopscotch is the dazzling, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.
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- The Time of the Hero by WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The action ofThe Time of the Hero, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's first novel, takes place at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. There, four angry cadets who have formed an inner circle in an attempt to ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide.The Time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets' nightmare life: brutal initiation rights, poker in the latrines, drinking contests; and, above all else, the strange military code which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy. WhenThe Time of the Hero was first published in Peru in 1962, it was considered so scandalous that a thousand copies were burned in an official ceremony at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language. "...[A]s with other fine writers, Vargas functions on more than a single level of meaning." -The New York Times
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- The Death of Artemio Cruz by As the novel opens, Artemio Cruz, the all-powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, lies confined to his bed and, in dreamlike flashes, recalls the pivotal episodes of his life. Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz's heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death. Perhaps Fuentes's masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.
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- The Obscene Bird of Night by Humberto, who lives and works at a convent home for old women, loses his sanity as he becomes obsessed with black magic and his duty to protect a monstrous child.
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- Three Trapped Tigers by Cabrera Infante's masterpiece, Three Trapped Tigers is one of the most playful books to reach the U.S. from Cuba. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography--such as the section entitled "Some Revelations," which consists of several blank pages--this novel has been praised as a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses. Centering on the recollections of a man separated from both his country and his youth, Cabrera Infante creates an enchanting vision of life and the many colorful characters found in steamy Havana's pre-Castro cabaret society.
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- The House of the Spirits by "Spectacular...an absorbing and distinguished work...The House of the Spirits...is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America." --The New York Times Book Review The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future. One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate.
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- Paradiso by In the wake of his father's premature death, Jose Cemi comes of age in a turn of the century Cuba described in the Washington Post as "an island paradise where magic and philosophy twist the lives of the old Cuban bourgeoisie into extravagant wonderful shapes."
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- I, the Supreme by Latin America has seen, time and again, the rise of dictators, Supreme Leaders possessed of the dream of absolute power, who sought to impose their mad visions of Perfect Order on their own peoples. Latin American writers, in turn, have responded with fictional portraits of such figures, and no novel of this genre is as universally esteemed as Augusto Roa Bastos's I the Supreme, a book that draws on and reimagines the career of the man who was "elected" Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814.By turns grotesque, comic, and strangely moving, I the Supreme is a profound meditation on the uses and abuses of power--over men, over events, over language itself.
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- The Tunnel by Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him to destroy the one thing he truly cared about...
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eBooks
Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature by
A comprehensive, encyclopedic guide to the authors, works, and topics crucial to the literature of Central and South America and the Caribbean, the Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature includes over 400 entries written by experts in the field of Latin American studies. Most entries are of 1500 words but the encyclopedia also includes survey articles of up to 10,000 words on the literature of individual countries, of the colonial period, and of ethnic minorities, including the Hispanic communities in the United States. Besides presenting and illuminating the traditional canon, the encyclopedia also stresses the contribution made by women authors and by contemporary writers. Outstanding Reference Source Outstanding Reference Book
Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction by
In the 1960s, Latin American literature became known worldwide as never before. Writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa all became part of the general culture of educated readers of English, French, German,and Italian. But few know about the literary tradition from which these writers emerged. This Very Short Introduction remedies this situation, providing an overview of modern Latin American literature from the late eighteenth century to the present.Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria covers a wide range of topics, discussing the birth of Modernismo, the first Latin American literary movement; how the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde; and how the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to beknown as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers many of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andres Bello and Jose Maria de Heredia through Borges and Garcia Marquez to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bolano.
Borges and Kafka, Bolaño and Bloom by
At a time in which many in the United States see Spanish America as a distinct and, for some, threatening culture clearly differentiated from that of Europe and the US, it may be of use to look at the works of some of the most representative and celebrated writers from the region to see how they imagined their relationship to Western culture and literature. In fact, while authors across stylistic and political divides--like Gabriela Mistral, Jorge Luis Borges, or Gabriel García Márquez--see their work as being framed within the confines of a globalized Western literary tradition, their relationship, rather than epigonal, is often subversive. Borges and Kafka, Bolaño and Bloom is a parsing not simply of these authors' reactions to a canon, but of the notion of canon writ large and the inequities and erasures therein. It concludes with a look at the testimonial and autobiographical writings of Rigoberta Menchú and Lurgio Gavilán, who arguably represent the trajectory of Indigenous testimonial and autobiographical writing during the last forty years, noting how their texts represent alternative ways of relating to national and, on occasion, Western cultures. This study is a new attempt to map writers' diverse ways of thinking about locality and universality from within and without what is known as the canon.
Latin American Literature in Transition 1980-2018: Volume 5 by
How do we address the idea of the literary now at the end of the second decade in the 21st century? Many traditional categories obscure or overlook significant contemporary forms of cultural production. This volume looks at literature and culture in general in this hinge period. Latin American Literature in Transition 1980-2018 examines the ways literary culture complicates national or area studies understandings of cultural production. Topics point to fresh, intersectional understandings of cultural practice, while keeping in mind the ongoing stakes in a struggle over material and intangible cultural and political borders that are being reinforced in formidable ways.
Food Studies in Latin American Literature by
Food Studies in Latin American Literature presents a timely collection of essays analyzing a wide array of Latin American narratives through the lens of food studies. Topics explored include potato and maize in colonial and contemporary global narratives, the role of cooking in Sor Juana's poetics, the centrality of desire in twentieth-century cooking writing by women, the relationship between food, recipes, and national identity, the role of food in travel narratives, and the impact of advertisements in domestic roles. The contributors included here - experts in Latin American History, Literature, and Cultural Studies -- bring a novel, interdisciplinary approach to these explorations, presenting new perspectives on Latin American literature and culture.
Gender and the Self in Latin American Literature by
This book explores six texts from across Spanish America in which the coming-of-age story ('Bildungsroman') offers a critique of gendered selfhood as experienced in the region's socio-cultural contexts. Looking at a range of novels from the late twentieth century, Staniland explores thematic concerns in terms of their role in elucidating a literary journey towards agency: that is, towards the articulation of a socially and personally viable female gendered identity, mindful of both the hegemonic discourses that constrain it, and the possibility of their deconstruction and reconfiguration. Myth, exile and the female body are the three central themes for understanding the personal, social and political aims of the Post-Boom women writers whose work is explored in this volume: Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Ángeles Mastretta, Sylvia Molloy, Cristina Peri Rossi and Zoé Valdés. Their adoption, and adaptation, of an originally eighteenth-century and European literary genre is seen here to reshape the global canon as much as it works to reshape our understanding of gendered identities as socially constructed, culturally contingent, and open-ended.
Video: Six Nobel Prize Winning Authors from Latin America
Learn about Six Nobel Prize Winning Authors from Latin America in this short video.
Websites
- Latino StoriesWebsite devoted to Latino/Latinx Literature and Research Resources.
- Latin American Literature TodayA quarterly online publication that seeks to reflect new realities of Spanish-language literature.
- Letras LibresA literary magazine published in Mexico.
Featured eBook Gem
The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by ISBN: 9780822987666The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature examines the defining role of plants in cultural expression across Latin America, particularly in literature. From the colonial georgic to Pablo Neruda's Canto general, Lesley Wylie's close study of botanical imagery demonstrates the fundamental role of the natural world and the relationship between people and plants in the region. Plants are also central to literary forms originating in the Americas, such as the New World Baroque, described by Alejo Carpentier as "nacido de árboles." The book establishes how vegetal imaginaries are key to Spanish American attempts to renovate European forms and traditions as well as to the reconfiguration of the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Such a reconfiguration, which persistently draws on indigenous animist ontologies to blur the boundaries between people and plants, anticipates much contemporary ecological thinking about our responsibility towards nonhuman nature and shows how environmental thinking by way of plants has a long history in Latin American literature.
Podcasts
- La Lista
A podcast about writers and their Latinx identity. - Latino Studies New Books
Interviews with scholars of Latinx Studies about their new books. - La Biblioteca
An exploration of the collections of the Library of Congress that focus on the cultures of Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the Hispanic community in the United States. - Radio Ambulante
Radio Ambulante covers Latin American life with stories of love and migration, youth and politics, environment and families in extraordinary circumstances.
Video: Latin American Literature Documentary
This video details the lives and writings of various Latin American authors and weaves their stories into profound.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
New York and Chicago Public Library Best Books of 2020; listed for National Book Award and Booker Prize. The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse has the whole village investigating the murder. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
NYT best seller; multiple awards; in development as a Hulu original limited series; a best book of the year designation by many outlets. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find.
At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
Nelson's life is not turning out the way he hoped. He has girlfriend problems, his brother left and Nelson has to care for their mother, and his acting career can't seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson's hero, Henry Nuñez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that's when the real trouble begins.
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption.
The Houseguest: And Other Stories by Amparo Dávila
Like those of Kafka, Poe, Leonora Carrington, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo Dávila's stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted--you'll finish each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear.
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
NYT best seller and notable book; Brooklyn Public Library Prize; International Latino Book Award finalist. Named a best book of the year by many outlets. This debut novel tells the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation by Julissa Arce
In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. Instead, Julissa deftly argues, these demands leave her and those like her in a purgatory – neither able to secure the power and belonging of whiteness nor find it in the community and cultures whiteness demands we leave behind.
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
Featured Journal Article
- The Criticality of Latino/a Fiction in the Twenty-First Century by Theresa Delgadillo
A brief dive and critique into the influences, experiences, and literary entities that embody Latin American Literature in the 21st century.
Isabel Allende (Chile)
Arguably the most widely-read Latin American woman author, Allende's books often intertwine aspects of her personal experiences together with magical realism.
Alfonsina Storni (Argentina)
A poet and playwright. Storni was a non-conformist and her writing often addressed politics, gender roles, and discrimination against women.
Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
First Latin American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1945). Mistral was an educator, consul, intellectual, and poet.
Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay)
Rossi is a novelist, poet, translator, and short story writer. She is one of the very few women associated with the Latin American Boom. Her writing looks at political and social injustices, love, feminism, and sexuality.
Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
Lispector's writing style has been described as "innovative and idiosyncratic" and even revolutionary. Her themes center on intimacy and introspection.
Giocanda Belli (Nicaragua)
Poet, novelist, and political activist. Belli's works are internationally acclaimed. She has bee nominated for and won multiple awards for her writing.
Classic Books in Print
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Publication Date: 1967This epic tale of seven generations of the Buendia family spans a hundred years of Latin American history. The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love--in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism." One of the most significant works in the Spanish literary canon, Pablo Neruda called it "The greatest revelation in the Spanish language since Don Quixote."
Woman Hollering Creek by Publication Date: 1991A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.
The Book of Imaginary Beings by Publication Date: 1957The Book of Imaginary Beingsis Borgess whimsical compendium of more than one hundred of the strange creatures conceived down through history by the human imagination. This unique contribution to fantasy literature ranges widely across the worlds mythologies and literatures to bring together the fantastical inventions drawn from the Kabbalah, Homer, Confucius, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Kafka, among others. Here readers will find the familiar and expected dragons, centaurs, and unicorns, as well as the less familiar and altogether unexpected Animals That Live in the Mirror, the Humbaba, the Simurgh, and other undeniably curious beasts.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Publication Date: 1991Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters-Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia-arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind. What they have lost-and what they find-is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premiere novelists of our time.
Video: Writing the Impossible - Dive into Borges
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was an Argentine writer and literary mastermind, who captivated the world with his ingenious blend of fiction, philosophy, and intricate storytelling. Borges became renowned for his works that blurred the lines between reality and imagination. He was a pioneer of the magical realism genre, crafting tales that navigated labyrinths of thought, literature, and metaphysics. His stories often explored themes of identity, time, and the infinite, leaving readers pondering the nature of existence itself.
Databases
Search these databases for Latin American literary criticism and analysis:
Journals
National Hispanic Heritage Month on Screen
For more on the broader topic of National Hispanic Heritage Month, check out this list of eight documentaries about voices around Latin America and the stories they have to offer.
More videos about Latin American culture, history, literature, and music can be found here.
Wayne State University Press
Wayne State University Press is a distinctive urban publisher committed to supporting the core research, teaching, and service mission of WSU by generating high-quality scholarly and general-interest books of global importance. Through its publishing program, the Press disseminates research, advances education, and serves the local community while expanding the international reputation of the Press and the University.
Wayne State University Press has a subject category called Latin American Studies which showcases many great works discussing the writers and themes discussed on this page.