Tag Archives: authors

March 2024

Writers of Literature and Social Consciousness

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By Carole Reedy

This month let’s talk about fierce Mexican women writers who scrutinize the varied plights of humankind, their words dissecting and analyzing society and human behavior. All have the ability to keenly observe, be it in a novel, short story, or essay, offering the reader fresh perspectives with which to view the world.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
A main contributor to the Spanish Golden Age of Literature (c. 1492-1659 or 1681, depending on who’s defining it), Sor Juana is today still recognized as one of the most important women writers of Spanish and Mexican literature.

Born near Mexico City as Juana de Asuaje y Ramírez de Santillana, a discrepancy exists, even today, concerning her birthdate. There is record of two baptisms, one under the name Juana in 1648 and the other in the name of Inés in 1651.

Sor Juana’s life was a constant battle to get an education not only for herself but for all women. She was active from an early age in her struggle to be educated. As a little girl she often hid in the hacienda’s chapel in order to read her grandfather’s books.

Recognized as a child prodigy, she was educated at home and could read and write in Latin by age three. She wrote her first poem at eight. Although she wanted to enter the university disguised as a male, her mother denied the request while continuing her private teaching at home.

In 1667 Sor Juana entered a nunnery and dedicated her life to writing prose and poetry about feminism, love, and religion. The convent was the only path open to her to enable “no fixed occupation, which might curtail my freedom to study.”

One of the most significant and recommended books about Sor Juana was written by Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, entitled Sor Juana: or The Traps of Faith (1982).

Although there is much written information about Sor Juana’s struggles against church and state, as well as her censorship and rejection, the best way to understand her is through her original poetry and prose. There are translations to English for non-Spanish speakers. For a flavor of her philosophy try her famous poem “Hombres Necios” (“Foolish Men.” C. 1689).

Sor Juana died at 46 from the plague while caring for afflicted nuns in the convent.

Elena Poniatowska
Today at 91 years old, Poniatowska is still active in journalism, literature, and politics, though to a lesser degree than in the past. She was one of the founders of the prestigious newspaper La Jornada, as well as Fem, a feminist magazine. She also founded two well-known and strong Mexico City institutions – Siglo XXI, a publishing house, and the Cineteca Nacional, the national film institute.

It is impossible to list the awards Poniatowska has won worldwide or to list all the articles and books she has packed into a lifetime. I will just mention a few that have meant a lot to me in my many years of studying Spanish language and culture, as well as in simply reading for pleasure.

The first book I read cover-to-cover in Spanish was Poniatowska’s novel Leonora (2011), a novel based on the life of her good friend the eccentric surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington.

The book has much to offer: a glimpse into the world of surrealism through the Mexican artists and friends of Leonora, a voyage through her disturbed upper-class British childhood and adolescence, and her journey into madness. Scattered throughout are provocative tidbits of well-known personalities from her time in Europe and the US during World War II and then in Mexico, where she spent the rest of her long life.

Poniatowska’s style is straightforward, but not simple. It is a pleasure to read her and especially to learn more about the culture of her era.

Poniatowska’s best known book is La noche de Tlatelolco (Massacre in Mexico in English, 1971), which contains testimonies of the victims of the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City. During the presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-70), students demonstrated to protest their discontent with the authoritarian government. On October 2, 1968 (ten days before the Summer Olympics were to begin in Mexico City – those Olympics are famous in their own right for a Black Power protest), the military put a stop to the protests. It is estimated that 300 to 500 students who had gathered in the Plaza de Tres Culturas, the main square in the Tlatelolco neighborhood, were shot and killed by the military. Poniatowska’s interviews, charts, and slogans from the student survivors bring the events painfully alive for the reader.

Certainly Poniatowska is and has been a role model for all young women.

Cristina Rivera Garza
Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico’s most prolific and popular writers, was born in 1964 on the US/Mexico border in the state of Tamaulipas. She teaches and writes in both countries and languages, currently living in San Diego and teaching history at the University of San Diego.

Her most recognized work, Nadie me verá llorar (No One Will See Me Cry, 1999) won the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 2001. This is the tale of the intertwined lives of Joaquín Buitrago, a morphine-addicted photographer with upper-class roots, and Matilda Burgos, a former prostitute of peasant origin who was confined to a mental hospital.

“This touching story plumbs the psychological depths of the morphine addict, vividly portrays life a century ago in Mexico, and has the added appeal of strong female characters,” says Nerissa Moran, a Spanish-language book dealer. The renowned Carlos Fuentes called the book “one of the most perturbing and beautiful novels ever written in Mexico.” Best to read it in Spanish, according to Garza’s fans.

Garza won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 2009 for La muerte me da (Death Gives Me, 2007), a fragmentary and experimental novel in which the narrator discovers castrated bodies, the body and parts separated, and the text undergoes a similar fragmentation. Garza is the only author to win the Sor Juana award twice.

One of her most intriguing books is Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice (2023), a nonfiction work in which she reconstructs the circumstances leading to her younger sister’s murder in 1990. Through differing styles, she creates a book that brings back memories of this young woman who attested “I am a seeker. I want to try new things; maybe more pain and loneliness, but I think it would be worth it. I know there is more than these four walls and this sky, annoyingly blue.”

Valeria Luiselli
“Versatile” is the first word that comes to mind when Valeria Luiselli’s name comes up in conversation. She has lived in Mexico, the US, South Africa, South Korea, India, France, and Spain and has studied dance, literature, and philosophy. She has worked as a librettist for a ballet company, taught comparative literature, and has written for several art galleries.

We know her best, however, as a writer of fine literature, with immigration concerns central to both her fiction and nonfiction.

Luiselli’s book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions (2017) is ranked number 83 on The Guardian’s list of the best 100 books of the 21st century. One of my favorites, Tell Me How It Ends uses the 40 questions Luiselli, working as an interpreter, asks of undocumented Latin American children in deportation hearings. Luiselli highlights the dichotomy between immigrant dreams and the reality of American racism and fear. This short book is an emotional journey into the process, which includes Luiselli’s conversations with her own children, who ask, “Tell us how it ends, momma. What happens to the children?”

Another journey into the world of immigration is her Lost Children Archive: A Novel (2020), about a family that takes a vacation from New York to Arizona. Although the main theme is immigration and children, other family concerns pepper the journey and it is richly flavored with personal angst and perspective. The parents themselves are awaiting green cards, and the husband is obsessed with Geronimo and with bringing an understanding of the plight of the American Indian to his own children. The marriage appears to be disintegrating.

These are just a few of the legion of women who continue to spark awareness in readers through their inquisitive nature and prudent, yet daring and bold, language skills.

February 2022

Enduring Novels of Unrequited Love

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By Carole Reedy

“The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define.” E M Forster in Aspects of the Novel

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche felt that the state of unrequited love was preferable to that of no love at all, saying “indispensable … to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference.”

However debatable that idea, we’ve all experienced unrequited love at one time or another, and the feelings it evokes have provided novelists fodder over the centuries, starting with Dante and Beatrice in The Divine Comedy.

Here are a few literary gems that center on unrequited love. All remain as fresh as the day they were written.

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham (1915)
Listed first among these noted authors is Maugham’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece about the disabled Philip Carey, who falls in love with a waitress who subsequently treats him cruelly. The story follows Philip from the struggle with his disability as a teenager in an English vicarage to his studies in Heidelberg, a short stint as an artist in Paris, and then back to England where he meets Mildred, the beginning of the pain of unrequited love.

Maugham actually had more success writing for the theater, although today he is best known for his novels. Of Human Bondage was written when he was 23 and finishing medical school. When he was refused an advance on the manuscript, he put the book aside and concentrated on his successful career writing for the theater. Maugham himself didn’t think he had the technical ability to be a good writer, but he tells a good story, which is the key element of any good book. Of Human Bondage was finally published in 1915 and to this day remains one of the most popular and best-selling novels by an English author.

The Course of Love: A Novel, by Alain de Botton (2016)
This is de Botton’s second novel, following his first success, How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel (1997). As a philosopher, writer, editor, and journalist, he has been compared to Julian Barnes, Woody Allen, and Donald Barthelme, all both smart and ironic. De Botton is also a founding member of The School of Life in London and a new institution, Living Architecture.

This novel, which received rave reviews, follows the life of a married couple from first passion through the predictable challenging years that come. It is a truly Romantic novel, exploring the longevity of love over a lifetime.

According to The New York Times, “The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton’s name in the mid-1990s … Love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods, and insecurities to the page.”

Days of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante, published in 2005
For me, this novel evoked an intensity of emotion more pronounced even than Ferrante’s famed quartet, The Neapolitan Novels. The pain and subsequent actions of the “abandoned” protagonist are impeccably portrayed. Shocking but understandable. Is she unreasonable or incredibly sane? You decide.

Ferrante remains voluntarily sequestered from publicity in the noble attempt to attract readers based on the quality of the writing rather than publicist hype. I hope her identity remains a secret, as it adds another layer of enchantment to her books.

Another of her noted books, The Lost Daughter (2008), has been made into a movie directed by and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal; it is available on Netflix.

Heartburn, by Nora Ephron (1983)
The always-entertaining Nora Ephron brought us hours of poignant laughter during her career as a writer and observer of our times. In Heartburn, a novel based on her tumultuous marriage to and break-up with political journalist Carl Bernstein, she expertly blends a range of emotions expressing her state of being with a variety of recipes.

Adam Gopnik speculated in The New Yorker on her decision to include recipes: “In Heartburn, the recipes serve both as a joke about what a food writer writing a novel would write and as a joke on novel-writing itself by someone who anticipates that she will not be treated as a ‘real’ novelist.”

Ephron has a talent for converting the apparently tragic to the absurdly comic.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver (1981)
Not a novel, but the short stories in this collection are among the classics in modern literature. The title of the collection is also the title of one of the stories. You may recognize this title from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film Birdman, in which the central character is an old Hollywood actor who is mounting a Broadway play named for and based on Carver’s story.
Carver is consistently praised by critics for his succinctness and veracity and for his ability to relate a broad range of emotion in few words. These stories about love pass the test of time.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen (1818, published posthumously)
A somewhat different twist on unrequited love in this, the last of Jane Austen’s six published novels.
In this one the protagonist, Anne Elliott, discards her love interest based on some rather bad advice from a friend, an action she lives to regret. It all turns out well in the end, as do a majority of Austen’s novels, most of which include some form of love gone wrong.

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
“Singular, intelligent, and beautiful” are words that have been used to describe this Booker-Prize-winning novel by Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017. The praise is well deserved, and this book in particular is a favorite among readers.

The heartbreaking story of a butler in post-WWII Britain who receives a letter from the housekeeper of two decades past, this short book is filled with the ambience of the period, and of the war with its fascist-sympathizing aristocrats. But the story that moves the narrative is that of the relationship between butler and housekeeper, and the regret of unrequited love.

In 1993, the book was made into a popular movie starring Antony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez (1985, Spanish; 1988, English)
Another winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1982) graces this list. Márquez hails from Colombia, where he had homes in both Bogotá and Cartagena, in addition to Paris and Mexico City, where he died in 2014. During his long life, he not only wrote novels, he also studied law and was a journalist. Márquez also was a friend to many famous people and politicians, including Fidel Castro.

The love story of Florentino and Fermina in Love in the Time of Cholera spans a lifetime and is one of Marquez’s most beloved novels, demonstrating that over the years love is not fluid, but ever changing.

Magical realism (the mixture of fantasy and fact) permeates his creations. In his own words, Márquez tells us, “In Mexico, Surrealism runs through the streets. Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America.”

Márquez was influenced by many other writers, among them Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and especially William Faulkner. In the 1960s, Márquez lived in the colonia San Ángel in Mexico City, where he wrote his famed One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

October 2020

Continuing in Quarantine: Autumn Reading Repertoire

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By Carole Reedy

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are – Mason Cooley

The good news during this pandemic is that our reading recommendations do not diminish, even with the virus hovering over daily activities and dictating our routines. The novels here cover a variety of subjects and eras, all of them fighting for the top of my “2019-20 favorite books” list.

THE PULL OF THE STARS: A NOVEL, by Emma Donoghue

Dublin, 1918, war, a flu epidemic, midwives and nurses, pregnant women and their offspring, and even Sinn Fein: these are the elements that make up this fast-paced, electrifying novel.

The day I started it I was up until 2:30 am engrossed in the story of the midwife, her colleagues, and the patients in the Maternity/Fever Ward of a Dublin hospital. The book’s setting over just a few days provides real insight into the political, economic, and social history of the era of war and pandemic in Ireland … and probably of the world.

Many readers thought highly of Donoghue’s well-regarded book regarded 2011 novel Room (though I did not). Whether or not you appreciated it, you’ll be pleased that this one is totally different in approach and style. The writing is fluid and descriptive, the characters most admirable and lovable – even the grumpy ones.

THE OTHER RICHARD III, by John Birney

Turns out that Richard III wasn’t such a bad guy after all, according to author John Birney, who wants to portray Shakespeare’s most evil and disagreeable king in a different and perhaps truer light.

After I read and wholeheartedly recommended Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague (a variation on the name Hamlet) by Maggie O’Farrell (2020) to my friends Larry and Sue, they, in turn, knowing my admiration for Shakespeare, suggested I read this modern play written in old Elizabethan blank verse, authentic and archaic, but with the sweep of a modern hand.

Simply described, it is beautifully rendered. I’m in awe of any author who can take an historical figure and a play written by Shakespeare and create a new story and aspect of the play. Kudos, Mr. Birney, for tackling this project and recreating a classic story into a readable, modern, compelling, and most enjoyable piece of literature without deprecating the original.

THE LYING LIVES OF ADULTS, by Elena Ferrante (tr. Ann Goldstein)

I awoke from a deep sleep at 12:01 am the morning of September 1, immediately knowing the reason: the newest Elena Ferrante novel was due at that moment. I stretched my arm out to reach for my iPad, always at my bedside for easy access to middle-of-the-night reading. And sure enough, there I found the link to purchase and download the book, which I did immediately for fear the electricity might go out in the night and prevent my reading the first words bright and early. Avid readers will understand completely this motive and the resulting action.

Fans of the four novels that make up The Neapolitan Quartet will not regret the five years they waited for Ferrante to publish this newest gem. Dayna Tortorici, reviewer for The New York Times, assuages any doubts about the newest book: “What a relief it is when an author who has written a masterpiece returns to prove the gift intact.”

Like the Quartet, the setting is upper and lower (class and physicality) Naples, a band of adolescents the focus, along with the dishonest parents of the title. Again, the array of characters and their predictable and unpredictable actions and reactions is the driving force behind Ferrante’s genius.

And, no, we still aren’t certain of her identity despite much speculation by journalists and others.

THIS IS HAPPINESS, by Niall Williams

This summer another book by Niall Williams, History of the Rain: A Novel (2014), caught my attention, and I proceeded to recommend it to everyone I knew who loved reading. I’ve already decided it’s one of my favorites of the year. It brought me back to childhood, Ireland, reading, and parental and family relationships in words, sentences, and paragraphs that flow like the River Shannon.

Naturally, I was eager to read this more recent book by Williams. In This Is Happiness, the author returns to the fictionalized town of Faha on the Shannon in Ireland, but this time with the story of a troubled young man, his grandparents, and an assortment of amusing, and sometimes disturbing, residents of the area. Once again, Williams carries us to a different time, locale, and world with his quirky, instinctive talent for descriptive presentation.

DADDY: STORIES, by Emma Cline

Cline surprised us a few years ago with her novel The Girls: A Novel (2016), an insight into the followers and would-be followers of convicted murderer Charles Manson. Now, with Daddy, a group of short stories, she explores further the interactions between men and women.

The Guardian’s review observes: “There is … always an awareness of economic imbalance in these interactions and the pressure put on women to be sexually available and ‘not waste [their] prettiness.’ As in The Girls, Cline is acute at exposing how women internalize the expectations of men.”

Each of these stories is a small gem, but don’t expect to derive much happiness from them. After all, she’s writing about male and female relationships (!).

THE MAN IN THE RED COAT, by Julian Barnes

Lovers of the Belle Époque and, of course, followers of the respected author and Francophile Julian Barnes will revel in his latest book about a man, this dreamy era, and the people who dominate the ballrooms of the time. If you read the hardcover edition, you’ll be swept away by the quality of the paper, the illustrations of the characters, and the entire presence of the book, which enhances the story within. Every aspect of time and place is immaculately and decorously presented, just as the era itself projects.

Who is The Man in the Red Coat? He is renowned French surgeon and gynecologist Samuel Jean Pozzi (1846-1918). Barnes entertains us with the story of his life, as well as the delicious gossip about the outlandish characters of the Belle Époque that surround him, Count Montesquiou and Sarah Bernhardt among many others. Readers of Proust will recognize their favorite personages from Remembrance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu) among the friends of Pozzi and Montesquiou.

Of course, it takes Barnes’ extraordinary talent to weave the narrative of Pozzi’s life into a fine piece of literature.

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM: A Novel, by Yaa Gyasi
You’ll recognize this author who a few years ago wrote the gripping novel Homegoing: A Novel (2016), which follows the descendants of two Ghanaian girls through seven generations from Africa to the US.

Gyasi’s newest novel, which James Woods of The New Yorker thinks is the better, takes place in the US, the narrator a not particularly likable 28-year-old Ghanaian/American woman. Just out this week, I’ve not had a chance to read it, but it’s at the top of my list. If you haven’t read Homegoing, you’re in for a treat. It’s extremely clever without being trite and the provided genealogy chart makes easy work of keeping track of family lines.

These spell-binding novels are wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle, but, after all, we are in the midst of a pandemic. I can take a nap whenever I choose. Stay safe and happy in your reading!

2020, March 2020

Just Like A Woman: More Color and Diversity in the Novel as in Life

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By Carole Reedy

Two Latinas, one Native American, one Black American, one Ghanaian American, and one White American. These remarkable women make up the list of some of the most anticipated 2020 novels written by women.

In 2019, we saw the first black woman and first black British author, Bernadine Evaristo, win the coveted Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Previously, just four black women had been shortlisted for the award.

In an unprecedented action, the Booker committee decided to flout the one-winner rule. The prize was shared with author Margaret Atwood for The Testaments, sequel to her best-selling novel A Handmaid’s Tale.

The books listed here will surely be among those considered for this year’s top prizes. Let this column serve as an early alert so you can get on those library waiting lists!

Two important novels to be published this year are not on this list because we reviewed them in the February 2020 issue of The Eye: The Mirror and the Light by Hillary Mantel (in March) and The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (in June). See theeyehuatulco.com to read about these marvelous new novels.

On to the next 2020 selections, with publication dates in parentheses…

Zora Neale Hurston
Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (January 2020)

Surely the most recognizable name on this list, the late Hurston’s works continue to rise from the ashes. Upon her death of heart disease in 1960, Hurston’s papers were tossed into a burn barrel, but then were miraculously saved by a friend passing the house where Hurston had lived, the valuable manuscripts continuing to be published to this day. It’s also thanks to writer Alice Walker, who in 1975 published “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in Ms. Magazine, that attention has focused on the author.

It’s impossible to begin discussing Hurston’s intense struggles and experience. Just reading a brief biography of her life is exhausting. But we’re fortunate to live in a world filled with publishers who continue to remind us who she was and what she means to history and society.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick contains 21 stories of love and race, eight of them from the lost Harlem Renaissance collection of the 1920s and 30s. The Guardian calls her tales “wickedly funny…unnerving at times, but always a thrill.” We are so fortunate to benefit from the discovery of her stories.

Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman (March 3, 2020)

This novel is based on Erdrich’s grandfather’s story, both as a night watchman in a North Dakota factory and as a member of the Chippewa Council, where he was active in arguing for the Native American during a time (1953) when the US government was presenting a new bill that threatened their rights.

Memorable characters from the reservation and others make up the world of Erdrich’s book, one the publisher describes as “a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.”

Erdrich has won a plethora of awards, including the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, she owns a bookstore, Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, with a focus on Native American literature.

Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom (September 15, 2020)

This tops my eager-to-read list because I and most of my reading friends were deeply impressed with Homegoing, Gyasi’s 2016 debut historical fiction novel, which follows the family of many generations of Ghanaians. Among other awards, the book received the 2017 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

Gyasi’s new novel also examines the life of a Ghanaian family, this time in Alabama. Those who are fortunate enough to have received advance copies give this book five stars, praising it as the book that “will make her a legend.”

Isabel Allende
A Long Petal of the Sea (January 21, 2020)

Those of you who want to read in Spanish to improve your second language skills will find Allende a good place to start. She’s accessible and a master storyteller and historian. Allende’s style is often magical realism, and the most popular of her many novels is The House of the Spirits.

The Guardian writes that “At this point in Allende’s career, it’s easy to forget what a trailblazer she was, a rare female voice in a wave of Latin American literature that was overwhelmingly male.”

A Long Petal of the Sea starts during the Spanish Civil War, continues with the protagonists through France and eventually to Pinochet’s Chile, and finally moves to Venezuela. The poet Pablo Neruda plays a part in the expansive tale of 80 years, as does Allende’s own life. It sounds to me like a complete and satisfying historical tale.

Julia Álvarez
Afterlife (April 7, 2020)

After 15 years, we’re finally looking forward to another Álvarez novel. Many of us remember well In the Time of Butterflies, the story of sisters rebelling during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, as well as How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, also a family tale whose story takes place in the Dominican Republic and in the US.

Afterlife is a novel of the immigrant experience and of a recent widow dealing with loss and grief. It is described by critics as both moving and funny.

One of our favorite Latin American authors, Luis Alberto Urrea (if you haven’t read his The House of Broken Angels, you have a great delight in store for you!), welcomes Alvarez’s return with this: “The queen is back with the exact novel we need in this fraught era.”

Kate Elizabeth Russell
My Dark Vanessa (March 10, 2020)

Like Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel Gone Girl, this first novel by a young American PhD is being touted as the most-awaited novel of the year by The New York Times, Esquire, and The Guardian, among others.

Esquire says: “A singular achievement – a masterpiece of tension and tone . . . with utmost sensitivity and vivid gut-churning detail. Before you start My Dark Vanessa, clear your schedule for the next few days…this will utterly consume you.”

The story, woven from memory, is one the publisher describes as “exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher.”

The mere availability of these future masterpieces in libraries and bookstores and on Amazon and Kindle fills me with two deeply satisfying emotions: joy and anticipation. Booker-prize winner Evaristo expresses contemporary women’s concerns best in one brief sentence: “We black British women know that if we don’t write ourselves into literature no one else will.”

Stay in the limelight, gals! Keep reading.