spanish but not really

 We're done! I'm really glad I took this class this year, and I'm really glad to have been exposed to more Latin American literature! It wasn't my first time reading Latin American stories, and it definitely won't be the last, but it was certainly a nice sprint through a bunch of good ones. This class actually helped me out with an issue I come across in reading, in that I sometimes find it difficult to choose my next book. Because of the class structure and the contract, I never had to sit and think about which book to read next, it was just a clear-cut move to the next one, no analysis paralysis involved. I don't know how I'm going to carry that through to my life after this class, but I guess I'll just allow myself to be a little more haphazard and flexible about how I read now. Dare I say it, I might have become a more playful reader. The book selection this term had some gems in it, and some that I never want to go near again. My favourites were (in...

Fever Dream is definitely up there among one of my favourite novels we've read this term. I don't think it was necessarily my absolute favourite, but it's up there. And don't get me wrong, it's horrible, the whole premise of it is. But I think it's a very important topic to think and talk about, and it's one that I've encountered in various classes across my degree thus far. Specifically, this book made me think a lot about a class I'm taking this term, the Sociology of Development. Coincidentally, the prof for this class is also Argentinian and often brings anecdotes from Argentina to the class, so the connecting points with this texts were plentiful.  The environmental and human health degradation that comes as a result of "modernisation" is a subject area that desperately needs to be given more attention. Unfortunately it comes hand in hand with other forms of exploitation, like maquiladoras and export-processing zones. In the attempt to...

 This week's novel felt like perhaps the most personal we have read so far this term. It is about a girl and her father, among a litany of other children, and a bunch of other people who see him as a sort of father figure. While reading it, I thought of two other books, one of which we read earlier on in the term (Pedro Paramo) and one that I read back in high school (Lullabies for Little Criminals.)  The main connection between these three works is the fatherly aspect. In Pedro Paramo and Papi, both characters - who are also the title of each book - play a paternalistic role to their communities in a very materialistic sense. Pedro Paramo controlled all the food and everything else in the village, such that when he died everyone perished. Papi had a similar characteristic too, in that he provided for the whole community (at a price). Not only did he provide for the narrator's community, but to most places he went.  As for Lullabies for Little Criminals, a story that was ...