 | |
| Author | Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez eds. |
|---|---|
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Realism |
| Publisher | Grijalbo Mondadori |
Publication date | 1996 |
| Publication place | Spain |
| Media type | Print Paperback |
| Pages | 262 pages |
McOndo is the 1996 literary anthology that spawned the McOndo movement.
Around 1994, Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet participated in an International Writer's Workshop which took place at the University of Iowa. [1] There Fuguet attempted to present a short-story to the Iowa Review for publication. [1] As the works of Latino authors were very popular at the time, Fuguet believed his chances of getting his works translated and published were quite high. [2] However, upon reading Fuguet's work, the editor was convinced that the lack of magical realist or fantastical components in the narrative made it seem as if, "the story could have taken place right there in [the United States of] America." [1] Consequently, the story was rejected on the grounds that 'it was not Latin American enough'. [1] In response to the rejection of American editors, a short story anthology was compiled dawning the title McOndo. [3] Edited and introduced by Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez, the anthology of new Latin American literature was first published in Spain in 1996. [4] The work compiled 17 short stories written by authors, all of whom were from either Latin America or Spain. [3] All of the contributors were males who had primarily commenced their literary careers in the 1990s and all were born after the late 1950s. [3] The contributing authors distanced themselves from the magical realism genre as they believed it did not correctly represent modern Latin America, which in the 1990s was full of "shopping malls, cable television, suburbs, and pollution". [3] Alternately, the authors wished to focus on the erasure of nations, borders and geographical identities as a result of expanding transnational networks while exploring the effects of globalization on economy and culture. [3] In one essay, Fuguet railed against the picturesque, exotic stereotypes that the publishing world had come to expect of Latin writers, citing well-known Cuban author-exile Reinaldo Arenas's pronouncement that the literary world expected Latin American novelists to tackle only two themes: underdevelopment and exoticism. Fuguet wrote that he does not deny that there are picturesque, colourful, or quaint aspects to Latin America, but that the world he lives in is too complicated and urban to be bound by the rules of magical realism. [2] In the end, the primary focus of the anthology was the introduction, which was considered to be more in the vein of an essay rather than a literary work. [5]
A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables, and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.
Magic realism, magical realism, or marvelous realism is a style or genre of fiction and art that presents a realistic view of the world while incorporating magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Magical realism is the most commonly used of the three terms and refers to literature in particular. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances. In his article "Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature", Luis Leal explains the difference between magic literature and magical realism, stating that, "Magical realism is not magic literature either. Its aim, unlike that of magic, is to express emotions, not to evoke them." Despite including certain magic elements, it is generally considered to be a different genre from fantasy because magical realism uses a substantial amount of realistic detail and employs magical elements to make a point about reality, while fantasy stories are often separated from reality. Magical realism is often seen as an amalgamation of real and magical elements that produces a more inclusive writing form than either literary realism or fantasy.
Alberto Manguel is an Argentine-Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, editor, and a former director of the National Library of Argentina. He is a cosmopolitan and polyglot scholar, speaking English, Spanish, German, and French fluently, and also Italian and Portuguese at a very advanced level. He left Argentina at the age of twenty, in 1968. He has lived in Israel, Argentina, France, United Kingdom, Italy, French Polynesia, Canada, United States and Portugal. Since 2021 he has directed an international center for reading studies in Lisbon, baptized in 2023 as Espaço Atlântida; In the biography of the center's website you can read: "He became a Canadian citizen and continues to identify his nationality as first and foremost Canadian."
Luis Andrés Caicedo Estela was a Colombian writer born in Cali, the city where he would spend most of his life. Despite his premature death, his works are considered to be some of the most original produced in Colombia. Caicedo led different cultural movements in the city like the literary group "Los Dialogantes", the Cinema Club of Cali and the "Ojo al Cine" Magazine. In 1970 he won the First Literary Contest of Caracas with his work "Los dientes de caperucita" that opened the doors of national recognition for him. Some sources say that he used to say that to live more than 25 years was a shame and it is seen as the main reason of his suicide on March 4, 1977, when he was that age.
Argentine literature, i.e. the set of literary works produced by writers who originated from Argentina, is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential in the whole Spanish speaking world, with renowned writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Leopoldo Lugones and Ernesto Sábato.
Alberto Felipe Fuguet de Goyeneche is a Chilean author, journalist, film critic and film director who rose to critical prominence in the 1990s as part of the movement known as the New Chilean Narrative. Although he was born in Santiago, he spent his first 13 years of life in Encino, California. He was among the fifty Latin American leaders selected by Time magazine and CNN in 1999, and he appeared on the front page of Newsweek magazine in 2002.
Juan José Arreola Zúñiga was a Mexican writer, academic, and actor. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the 20th century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he used elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and absurdist ideas in his work. Although he is little known outside Mexico, Arreola has served as the literary inspiration for a legion of Mexican writers who have sought to transform their country's realistic literary tradition by introducing elements of magical realism, satire, and allegory. Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, he is considered one of the masters of the hybrid subgenre of the essay-story. Arreola is primarily known for his short stories and he only published one novel, La feria.
Literature of the 19th century refers to world literature produced during the 19th century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1799 to 1900. Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other aspects of 19th-century culture.
José Manuel Donoso Yáñez, known as José Donoso, was a Chilean writer, journalist and professor. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States and Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death.
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style, with the 20th century literary movement known as Latin American Boom, and with its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries.
McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks with the magical realism mode of narration, and counters it with languages borrowed from mass media. The literature of McOndo presents urban Latin American life, in opposition to the fictional rural town of Macondo.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict every day and banal activities and experiences.
The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world. The Boom is most closely associated with Julio Cortázar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia. Influenced by European and North American Modernism, but also by the Latin American Vanguardia movement, these writers challenged the established conventions of Latin American literature. Their work is experimental and, owing to the political climate of the Latin America of the 1960s, also very political. "It is no exaggeration", critic Gerald Martin writes, "to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the Boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971."
American literary regionalism, often used interchangeably with the term "local color", is a style or genre of writing in the United States that gained popularity in the mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th century. In this style of writing, which includes both poetry and prose, the setting is particularly important and writers often emphasize specific features, such as dialect, customs, history and landscape, of a particular region, often one that is "rural and/or provincial". Regionalism is influenced by both 19th-century realism and Romanticism, adhering to a fidelity of description in the narrative but also infusing the tale with exotic or unfamiliar customs, objects, and people.
Yan Lianke is a Chinese writer of novels and short stories based in Beijing. His work is highly satirical, which has resulted in some of his most renowned works being banned in China. He has admitted to self-censorship while writing his stories in order to avoid censorship.
American literature in Spanish in the United States dates back as 1610 when the Spanish explorer Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published his epic poem Historia de Nuevo México. He was an early chronicler of the conquest of the Americas and a forerunner of Spanish-language literature in the United States given his focus on the American landscape and the customs of the people. However, it was not until the late 20th century that Spanish language literature written by Americans was regularly published in the United States.
William Spindler is a Guatemalan writer and journalist, whose works include fiction, poetry, and journalism in English and Spanish. He is the author of a novel Paises lejanos, and a book of short stories, "Expediciones", published in Bogota, Colombia in 2004. He was educated at the Liceo Guatemala school where he obtained a Bachillerato en Ciencias y Letras in September 1980. He completed his further education in London, UK after his family moved there in 1981. In 1988 he graduated from the Polytechnic of the South Bank in London with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages and International Studies.
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
José Edmundo Paz-Soldán Ávila is a Bolivian writer. His work is a prominent example of the Latin American literary movement known as McOndo, in which the magical realism of previous Latin American authors is supplanted by modern realism, often with a technological focus. His work has won several awards. He has lived in the United States since 1991, and has taught literature at Cornell University since 1997.
H. Mujeeb Rahman is a Tamil writer. His works include short stories, novels, short films, criticism and sufism. His work, combining magical realism with Historiographic metafiction, is primarily concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and exchanges between Tamil Muslims and Arabic civilizations, with much of his fiction being set on the Gulf and India.