Volume 24, Number 13 · August 4, 1977
Writing from a Deceptive Continent
By Michael Wood
The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature
selected and edited by Emir Rodríguez Monegal, with the assistance of Thomas Colchie
Knopf, 2 vols., 982 pp., $7.95 each (paper)
The Boom in Spanish American Literature Inter-American Relations
by José Donoso, translated by Gregory Kolovakos
Columbia University Press in association with the Center for, 122 pp., $4.95 (paper)
'Our America,' the Cuban José Martí wrote, meaning theirs. And the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, who died in 1916, picked up the refrain: 'the America of Moctezuma and Atahualpa, / the aromatic America of Columbus, / Catholic America, Spanish America, /…our America.' It is the literature of this America that the Borzoi anthology sets out to represent, and its editor, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, a noted Uruguayan critic and a professor at Yale, has not, like Darío, forgotten that a large part of this region is not Spanish at all. The book's generous selections from Brazilian literature, so often ignored or slighted on such occasions, are among its chief attractions.
Review, 2584 words
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