The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195092341 ISBN 13: 9780195092349

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1997

Synopsis

The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays Edited by Ilan Stavans "Like the novel and the short story, the essay is free-minded, ambitious, and seems to satisfy many needs at once," writes Ilan Stavans. "It entertains, it enlightens, it obfuscates, it confesses, it laments... What it cannot do, though, not even when it desperately tries to, is hide the truth: its texture is too crystalline, too genuine to hide the unhideable; and since essayists are lonely voices crying in the wilderness, their argument generates discomfort and is often censored by the powers that be. But Latin America has never been about silence."
For most English-speaking readers, however, even those familiar with the remarkable fictions flowing out of Latin America, the essay has been silent--invisible and unavailable. Now, in The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays, Ilan Stavans has broken that silence dramatically with an anthology that is as vast, as varied, and as fascinating as the region it represents. While retaining much of the flavor of Latin American fiction--the dazzling metaphors, richness of language, and sheer imaginative bravado--these essays give us the more intellectual, critical, and self-reflexive side of the dreaming mind that has so thoroughly entranced the literary world. From Baldomero Sanin Cano's lacerating critique of Theodore Roosevelt to Ezequiel Martinez Estrada's reverential reading of Thoreau; from Pablo Neruda's passionate Nobel acceptance speech to Mario Vargas Llosa's penetrating analysis of the destruction of the Incas; from Isabel Allende's and Carlos Fuentes's personal accounts of their writing to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's playful repudiation of the umbrella and Rosario Ferre's complex assessment of the role of the translator, this volume gives us the whole spectrum of concerns that have animated some of the greatest writers of our time. Of course, the political struggles that have afflicted the region for centuries--the "endemic dictatorships resembling tropical fevers," as Augusto Roa Bastos calls them--exert a constant pressure on the writing gathered here. Indeed, it is the attempt to understand the effects of history and politics on personal, cultural, and literary identities that makes these essays so compelling.
Enrique Anderson Imbert asserts that "the history of the essay does not show us a limbo of indecisive people or apprentices, but an emphatic assembly of spirits who felt confident, ingenious, and aware." With selections by Andres Bello, Jorge Amado, Julio Cortazar, Clairce Lispector, Octavio Paz, Ariel Dorfman, Manuel Puig, and many others, The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays is just such an assembly of spirits who deepen our awareness not only of literature but of the magical and terrifying truths of the human condition.

About this title

About the Author:

Ilan Stavans, a novelist and critic, teaches at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition, Art and Anger, and The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories. He has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is the recipient of the Latino Literature Prize.

Review:

"In the English-speaking world, most of us read the soul of Latin America mainly through her novels. But Ilan Stavans gives us a new way of understanding: the essay. Something about the essay--its tentative grasp, its emerging 'I'--comes very close indeed to the turbulent moment in Latin
America today."--Richard Rodriguez

"In the English-speaking world, most of us read the soul of Latin America mainly through her novels. But Ilan Stavans gives us a new way of understanding: the essay. Something about the essay--its tentative grasp, its emerging 'I'--comes very close indeed to the turbulent moment in Latin
America today."--Richard Rodriguez, author of Hunger of Memory

"Illan Stavans has established himself as an invaluable commentator on Latin American literature, and his selections here are rich and meaty. Dive in anywhere, and you are sure to encounter intelligence, irony, elegance, contrariness, and surprise."--Phillip Lopate

"I think [Stavans] has one of the best grips around on what makes Spanish America tick and he is most sensitive about its relationship to the rest of the world."--Gregory Rabassa, translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Stavans is a disciple of Kafka and Borges.... He accepts social identity broadly, in the most cosmopolitan terms.... [His] impulse is to broaden, not to narrow; he finds understanding through the complications of identity, not through the easy gestures of ethnic politics."--The New York Times
Book Review

"Gathered in this anthology is a feast of essays from the region.... The joys and provocations awaiting the reader go on and on."--Brad Hooper, Booklist

"The Latin American literary essay is alive and well, its critical thinking complementing the magic and exoticism common to Latin American fiction.... In addition to literate content, the volume serves as a reference tool thanks to an excellent introduction, a topical index, and short
biographies about each author."--Library Journal

"Recalling Neruda's Nobel Prize address, the Oxford collection is a powerful testimony to the Latin American people, `who have been marked by misfortune for centuries,' and to those writers who have struggled in the name of light, justice, and dignity."--Anthony Day,Los Angeles Times Book
Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0195092341
• ISBN 13: 9780195092349
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 518
• Editor: Stavans Ilan