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[one sky]

I just read Como Agua Para Chocolate and it was a great book. What�s your favorite book by a Mexican author or one you suggest reading?

[lozwich]

Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor. Its a history of his family. Very interesting.

Enjoy!
Lozwich.

[saraswati]

Mexican authors...hmm.... I just realized that I tend to read books written by Spanish-speaking writers but not necessarily Mexicans. There are quite a few you might like to check out...

Rudolfo Anaya
Ana Castillo
Marcela Serrano
Isabel Allende
Jorge Amado
Rosa Montero
Sandra Cisneros
Elena Poniatowska
Carlos Fuentes

Enjoy!

[moonraven]

Pedro P�ramo, by Juan Rulfo--written in the 1950s, it--not Cien a�os de Soledad--was the first in what became known as the style of "magical realism".

[MELEE]

OH MY GOD
(I hope those little emoticons look like my jaw has dropped)

Moonraven knows a heck of a lot about Latin America, but here is a tiny little slip! The Lost Steps (Los Pasos Perdidos) by the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, published in 1953, predating Rulfo's 1955 Pedro Paramo by a mer two years, is generally considered to be the "first" novel in the magic realism style.


But to answer the original poster, I've enjoyed Laura Esquivel's other books as well, I highly recomend them.

But I have to say the most memorable work I've ever read about Mexico(and much of the south of the current United States) was by the Spaniard Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca--would be conquistador shipwrecked off of Florida, lost and wondering for nearly 10 years before he ran into any other Europeans. It's been more than 10 years since I've read it, but I doubt I'll ever forget it.

[MELEE]

While I'm being nit-picky
(don't worry it doesn't happen too often)

Saraswati, Was your list ment to be non-Mexicans? or just not necessarily(but possibly) Mexicans? the last name on your list Carols Fuentes, is in fact a Mexican.



And my Dad thought a degree in Latin American Lit would be useless!!!

[moonraven]

I am very familiar with Los pasos perdidos, written during Carpentier's long exile in Venezuela. Last November, in fact, I followed Carpentier's "pasos" from another book he wrote a few years before Los pasos perdidos, Visi�n de Am�rica, across southeastern Venezuela. I have also read Carpentier's other novels.

Although some literary analysts place him in the camp of "Magical Realism", most do not--nor are other Cuban writers such as Lezama Lima or Cabrera Infante considered to be part of that group. The term, "Magical Realism" has been much abused--to the point where after Miguel �ngel Asturias received the Nobel and during the "Boom" of the 70s it was applied to any Latin American novel.

Los pasos perdidos is actually one of Carpentier's more conventional novels, written in a more realistic style than the others, and contains none of the magical realism elements such as dead people narrating the story, and in fact few "irrational" elements. That particular novel reminds me more of the novels of Paul Bowles than of the "Magical Realism" novels--same thematic content of a traveler in an essentially hostile environment coming to a sad end, written in an idiocyncratic realist style.

(Macondo and Comala, the mythical towns that are the setting of many of the Garc�a M�rquez novels and of Pedro P�ramo respectively, have a very practical use: Comala begins at the latitude of Culiacan and stops at approximately Acapulco. From there south to Managua is Macondo North, from Managua to Lima Macondo Central and from Lima south Macondo South. This is an ironic way to pin down the different kinds of very attractive craziness one finds here.)

I'm happy to hear that you have a degree in Latin American Lit. Literature is never useless, in spite of the opinions of some of the rabid anti-intellectuals who frequent this site.

[moonraven]

So long as we are being nit-picky, Jorge Amado was a wonderful Brazilian writer who died 2 or 3 years ago. Saraswati, the last time I checked, they were speaking Portugese in Brazil. Rudolfo Anaya is a New Mexican writer (my old stomping grounds) who writes in English. Sandra Cisneros, a chicana writer, has been translated into Spanish, but writes in English. The same is true for Ana Castillo.

[JosephP]

Does B Traven count?

[saraswati]

Moonraven,
I am well aware who the writers are and where they are from, and that includes Rudolfo Anaya. (New Mexico may have been your "stomping grounds," but I grew up there.) All, but Jorge Amado- and that was a slip- hail from Spanish-speaking countries. I happen to like them all.

If you find my "tone" with you a bit short, just compare your post and MELEE's. She happened to make similar comments but managed to do so without sounding so condescending.

[matthews_world]

[moonraven]

Saraswati,

Right: Outbursts of sarcasm on the order of "OH MY GOD!" are courteous and non-condescending. Give me a break.

As for your designation of the US as a Spanish-speaking country (Anaya, Cisneros and Castillo are from the US), although there are a number of Spanish speakers and some who write in Spanish there, the US is considered to be an English-speaking country in the sense that English is the official language, and the three writers you mentioned write in English.

You can do whatever you like; I make it a policy not to recommend books and writers that I have not read.

Note to JosephP: Of course Traven (or whatever his real name was) counts--he wrote more (and better) books about Mexico than most born-in-Mexico writers!

[saraswati]

Funny you should presume I haven't read anything by the authors I mentioned, but then again, you tend to presume a great deal.

To the original poster...sorry about the tangent this thread has taken, it happens quite a lot.

[richtx1]

[yossibz]

I like Aura, by Carlos Fuentes. It's very short (about 60 pages), and a good choice for reading real literature while still learning Spanish.

I also liked Do�a Herlinda y su hijo, by Jorge L�pez P�ez. A very good movie of this novel was made in the mid 80's but the book is a bit different, and also excellent.

Another good book (though not a novel), is Historia M�nima de M�xico, by Daniel Cos�o Villegas (published by Colegio de M�xico). It's a very short history of Mexico from pre-Columbian to modern times.