Kirjahaku

A primarily culturalist interpretation of four major novels of the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa: La ciudad y los perros (1963), La casa verde (1966), Conversacion en La Catedral (1969), and Pantaleon y las visitadores (1973). The author sheds light on various techniques and themes of these novels to show how they contribute to Vargas Llosa's overall view of the human condition in Peru.

A primarily culturalist interpretation of four major novels of the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa: La ciudad y los perros (1963), La casa verde (1966), Conversacion en La Catedral (1969), and Pantaleon y las visitadores (1973). The author sheds light on various techniques and themes of these novels to show how they contribute to Vargas Llosa's overall view of the human condition in Peru.

Spain's only former colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea is home to a literature of transition - songs of freedom in which authors reflect on their identity within the context of recent colonialism and dictatorship. ""An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea"" is the first book-length critical study of this literature, a multigenre analysis encompassing fifty years of poetry, drama, essays, and prose fiction. Both resident and exiled authors offer insights into the impact of colonialism and dictatorship under Spanish rule and consider the fruits of ""independence"" under the regimes of Francisco Macias Nguema and Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Examining these works from the perspective of postcolonial theory, Marvin A. Lewis shows how writings from Equatorial Guinea depict the clash of traditional and European cultures and reflect a dictatorship that produced poverty, misery, and oppression. He assesses with particular care the impact of the Macias reafricanization process and its manifestations in literature. In showing how the views of the nation correspond and diverge in works of writers such as Maria Nsue Angue, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, and Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, Lewis brings to light artists who articulate their concerns in Spanish but are African in their souls. In analyzing the works of both renowned and emerging writers, he marks the themes that contribute to the formation of national identity: Hispanic heritage, the myth of Bantu unity, ""bonding in adversity"" during the Nguema regime, and the Equatoguinean diaspora. Lewis provides an accessible introduction to the work of central writers in a new area of literary study and includes the most exhaustive and up-to-date bibliography available on the subject. It is a groundbreaking work that broadens our understanding of African literature and will be the bedrock for future studies of this Hispanic corner of Africa.

Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, is the only African country in which Spanish is an official language and which has a tradition of literature in Spanish. This is a study of the literature produced by the nation’s writers from 2007 to 2013. Since its independence in 1968, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by dictators under whom ethnic differences have been exacerbated, poverty and violence have increased, and critical voices have been silenced. The result has been an exodus of intellectuals—including writers who express their national and exile experiences in their poems, plays, short stories, and novels. The writers discussed include Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, and Guillermina Mekuy, among others.

Pablo Adalberto Ortiz Quiñones (1914–2002) was one of the most gifted writers in Ecuador and all of Latin America. Yet outside of Ecuador and amongst Afro-Hispanic literature scholars in the United States, little critical attention has been given to this pioneer whose multi-genre contributions spanned decades. In his writings, Ortiz explores some of the defining social issues in the Americas since the African and European encounters with the New World, including the notion of “race.” He articulates a complex process of affirming the ethnic while not denying the national. Consequently, miscegenation—a biological process—as well as acculturation are motifs in his writings, which explore the essence of what it means to be Ecuadorian. Ortiz does not dwell upon the so-called “race” question, the issue that causes such anxiety and hostility, overtly and covertly, in the United States. Rather, he explores, in depth, ethnicity, class, and caste in his earlier writings and evolves into an international writer while maintaining a strong black awareness. Adalberto Ortiz’s transcendence of victimization to a broader view of the world is indicative of the title of Marvin A. Lewis’ analysis —from margin to center—and reflective of the approach taken by many Afro-Hispanic writers. The dialectical nature of Ortiz’s writings makes his work particularly interesting and rewarding, as revealed in Adalberto Ortiz: From Margin to Center. In this book, Lewis examines the form and content relationships between works published during different literary periods and movements. Emphasis is placed on Ortiz’s transition from the local to the international in each genre, and the theoretical approach is “eclectic,” depending upon the exigencies of the texts. Ecocriticism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, and other methodologies addressing the environment, place/displacement, identity, and historiographic metafiction are fundamental to the Lewis’ readings of Ortiz’s prose and poetry.

This study deals with representation and resistance in Afro-Uruguayan culture. It explores the manner in which Afro- Uruguayans defined, and continue to affirm, their ‘‘place’’ in a country in which societal and self perceptions were/are constantly shifting.