Indigenismo de vanguardia en el Perú: Un estudio sobre Boletín Titikaka (review)

288 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies all of the interviews including discussions of factors such as literary influences, literary technique, and the veiy craft of Latina wiiteis compromised by a literary and social context. The interviews fulfill the task well, demostrating how the cieative piocess has been handled by each of these authois ftom the begginings of theii careéis ro the present. The reader is exposed nor only ro rhe personal biographies of these authors, but also to their literary biographies. For almost all of them the craft of writing has its origin in certain personal experiences rhat are fundamenral to their developmenr as individuals and as writers: belonging ro an ethnic and cultural minority, being a woman in a patriarchal society, and growing up with two languages and between two languages. The dialogues are an efficienr means of understanding the works of these wrirers from their personal circumstances to theit literary formation . The writers themselves, upon reflecting upon their works, offer the reader a perspective on the texts that is distinct from that afforded by literary criticism and theory, and this is the book's main merit. All of the writers interviewed prove to have several common characteristics, despite proceeding from differenr origins and generations. Among these common traits, the most noteworthy is their fundamental preoccupation for women, especially unpowered women; a profound interest in language as an instrument of work and as a means of translating cultural experiences rooted in theit biculturalism; and the compromise they feel with their communities. The resulting self-portraits of the interviewed authors forge a panoramic image of Latina literature that can serve not only the specialist in this field and related fields, but also the non-academic reader who enjoys the works of these authors. The interviews are well handled, the conversations are pleasant, and there is spontaneity and moments of profundity in the words of some of the writers interviewed. As is usual in the field of Chicano/Latino literature, everything seems old and everything seems new, but the literature continues to attracr the academic wodd and the interested reader. Given the limitations of a genie such as the interview, some things that could have been important have not been discussed or have nor been discussed sufficiently, such as the reception of diese texts by Latino writers and the perception that Latina wiiteis have of the ciitics. Latina Self-Portraits is a book that serves to reveal to the reader the interlining from which emerge the works that comprise Latina literature in the United States, from a human perspective, introspective and therefore subjective, factois that are just as valid as others in the study of literature. ElviaArdalani University of Texas-Pan American Indigenismo de vanguardk en el Perú: Un estudio sobre BoletÃ-n Titikaka Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2000 Por Cynthia Vich Cynthia Vich's Indigenismo de vanguardia en el Perú is an engaging and insightful study of one of the most remarkable literary and cultural projects of the Peruvian Avant-garde of the 1920s. The Bohtin Titikaka, a monthly review edited by Gamaliel Chuiata (Arturo Peralta) and his btorher Alejandro Peralta, was published between 1926 and 1930 in Puno. The small provincial capiral of one of Peru's poorest, most remote deparrmenrs would seem an unlikely locus of aesthetic renovation and vanguardist activism. Yet in spite of Puno's marginal location with respect to the nation's traditional centers of intellectual production, the BoletÃ-n and its collaborators emerged as key participants in the currents then shaping the Peruvian literary and cultural panorama. Vich demonstrates in her work rhat the pages of the BoletÃ-n configure a rich textual space of negotiation and exchange between the social and aesthetic concems of a growing sectoi of Peiuvian intellectuals writing from the nation's maigins, so to speak, and its counteipaits in the moie established "lettered cities" of the time, both in Peiu and abroad. These maigins extended beyond geography to include the mestizo and middle class origins of a "new intellectual model" whose repre- Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 289 sentatives, accoiding to Vich, found in journalism and publications such as the BoletÃ-n a means...