Alumni Travel Reading 2018-2019: South American Tapestry

Twenty stories from Chile, including contributions by Marjorie Agosín, Marta Brunet, José Donoso, Ariel Dorfman, Jorge Edwards,and Pablo Neruda.

Besides its inherent interest, street art can provide an introduction to the neighborhoods, politics, and variety of a city.

The ode was a favorite form for Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. This bilingual volume is the first collection of all his odes in one place.

Donoso is probably the most prominent Chilean writer of the "boom" (a term he coined) and this is one of his more approachable novels, at least compared to the better known, but grotesque, The Obscene Bird of NIght. This story takes place during the summer holidays of the super rich on a Chilean country estate.

Love, crime and the search for truth amidst the terror of a Latin American military dictatorship.

This story of a fictional postman who befriends Pablo Neruda became famous as the movie Il Postino

This brief novella is a good introduction to Roberto Bolano. It narrates the story of an air force pilot set against the bloody first years of the Pinochet regime.

Jason Wilson provides a history with cultural and touristic information, enhanced by color photos and historical images.

Caistor, a notable translator, also writes cultural and literary guides.

In the chaos of 2001 Argentina an American student (and Borges specialist) seeks out an elusive figure considered to be the greatest living tango singer

Published in 1961 (English translation in 1981), it is considered by many to be Sabato's masterpiece. The story of violent crime in an old family is set in changing 1950s Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires inspired Cortázar's short fiction. There is even a Cortázar walking tour for tourists.

Bioy Casares, a master of the fantastic and the detective ("policial") genres, and a close collaborator of Borges -- many find his writing more engaging than Borges' -- here offers a mystery set in the Buenos Aires of the late 1920s.

Buenos Aires was an enormous presence in the life and work of Borges. There are some good examples in this collection.

Characteristic of the excellent Duke University Press "Reader" series, The Chile Reader presents documents spanning more than five hundred years of history. Most of the selections are by Chileans from diverse perspectives, whether Mapuche Indians, Spanish colonists, peasants, aristocrats, workers, entrepreneurs, feminists, priests or poets. Interviews, travel diaries, letters, cartoons, photographs, and song lyrics are included.

Like other entries in the "Reader" series, the selections cover a wide variety of historical periods, sources, themes, and formats to provide as complete a view of the country's history, culture and society as possible. The authors, largely Argentine, include some of the most prominent literary writers, historians, and political figures, including Tulio Halperin Donghi, San Martin, Rosas, Sarmiento, Alberdi, Echeverria, Darwin, Dario, Lugones, Girondo, Storni, Roberto Arlt, Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Cortazar, Rodolfo Walsh, Che Guevara, Alejandra Pizarnik, Peron, Guillermo O'Donnell, Ricardo Piglia, Alfonsin, Cesar Aira, and Beatriz Sarlo

The Brazil Reader's historical selections range from early colonization to the present day, with sections on imperial and republican Brazil, the days of slavery, the Vargas years, and the return to democracy. They include letters, photographs, interviews, legal documents, visual art, music, poetry, fiction, reminiscences, and scholarly analyses. The Reader looks at social behavior, women's lives, architecture, literature, sexuality, popular culture, and social inequalities from the Amazon to the Northeast and the Central-South.

The Rio de Janeiro Reader offers over 450 years of primary sources, a mix of government documents, lyrics, journalism, speeches, ephemera, poems, maps, engravings, photographs, et al.

This solid history provides, in addition to the chronological survey, short biographies, a glossary of terms, and extensive recommendations for further readings.

Another entry in the "Greenwoood Histories of the Modern Nations" series.

A very readable modern history.

“…from prizewinning journalist and Brazilian native Juliana Barbassa…[written] under the spotlight of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games… this kaleidoscopic portrait of Rio introduces the reader to the people who make up this city of extremes, revealing their aspirations and their grit, their violence, their hungers and their splendor…”

An entry in Bloomsbury's "The Writer and the City" series, Castro delivers a persuasive love letter to Rio while beautifully covering its history and culture.

Machado de Assis is widely acknowledged as Brazil’s – and Rio’s – greatest writer, whose literary devices prefigured the literature of the 20th century, and at the same time, recalls Sterne or Swift. Dom Casmurro is a novel of marriage and adultery, but his stories and other novels, such as Quincas Borba and Epitaph of a Small Winner (aka "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas") are equally good choices.

Amado (1912-2001) probably remains Brazil's best known writer internationally, translated into nearly 50 languages with popular film versions of his books, such as "Dona Flor and her Two Husbands." All his fiction is accessible, but The Violent Land is a good example of his robust depictions of Brazilian society, in this case the exploitative plantation system of his native northeast Brazil. At the same time, the political militant Amado presented a relentlessly optimistic picture of the Brazilian masses who transcend violence, poverty, and oppression.

Considered one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century, Lispector is especially distinguished for the prose of her short stories and their revelations of the interior lives of housewives, adolescent girls, family matriarchs, et al.

Over seventy short stories by 37 of the best-known Brazilian writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beginning with ten by Machado de Assis. The large volume includes a general introduction to Brazilian literary culture, author descriptions, and a general bibliography on Brazil and Brazilian literature in English.