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  • Latinocanadá: A Critical Study of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada
  • Victor R. Rivas (bio)
Hugh Hazelton. Latinocanadá: A Critical Study of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press. viii, 312. $80.00

Professor Hugh Hazelton has again established why he is at the forefront of what, to many, would still seem to be a newly emerging field of study: Latin Americans in Canada. Hazelton’s latest book, Latinocanadá: A Critical Study of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada, is a welcome addition to the expanding library collections detailing the experiences and cultural productions of one of the fastest growing populations in Canada. Organized, as the title suggests, around the lives and works of ten prominent Latin American authors with intrinsic Canadian ties, the book offers much more than the typical biographical sketches and reprinted selections of authors’ works found in traditional anthologies. In a presentation that is both enjoyable and informative, Hazelton masterfully weaves the particularities of the human interest stories of each author and his or her most telling words, in English translation, with the enlightened commentaries of an experienced literary critic. In Latinocanadá the narratives about each featured author are fascinating accounts of migrations in every sense of the word, from the human rights tragedies that lead to political or economic exile, to the pursuit of life-enhancing experiences such as travelling and studying abroad.

The featured authors and their countries of origin are the poet and novelist Jorge Etchevarry (Chile); poets Margarita Feliciano (Argentina), Alfredo Lavergne (Chile), Nela Rio (Argentina), and Yvonne América Truque (Colombia); novelists Gilberto Flores Patiño (Mexico) and Leandro Urbina (Chile); short story writers Alfonso Quijada Urías (El Salvador) and Alejandro Saravia (Bolivia); and prose satirist Pablo Urbanyi (Argentina). These are authors who, one way or another, have experience being part of Canadian society. Some have reinvented their lives, integrating into and contributing to their adopted communities, while others have strived to maintain the strongest of ties with their former homelands and their cultural institutions.

According to Hazelton, ‘The grounds for selecting the authors . . . are the actual presence of the author in Canada, the scale of his or her work, and the extent to which it has been previously translated into English.’ One nagging question tends to rise to the surface of every anthology featuring Latin American writers in Canada: how are they defined? Hazelton tackles the question head-on: his selection of authors is, indeed, writers originally from Latin America living in Canada. He explains further that ‘Latino-Canadian writing thus differs from previous patterns of “immigrant” literatures in that it is – and it will probably continue to be – the product of a steady flow of immigration from a variety of [End Page 392] different nations.’ However, what about the cultural production of Canadian-born descendants of Latin American immigrants?

Leaving definitions aside, Hazelton must be praised for the excellent historiographical research detailing the publication experiences of the several generations of Latino and Hispanic immigrants to Canada. From Montreal to Vancouver, from Toronto to Ottawa, immigrant Spanish-language speakers from Latin America or Spain have been compelled by their creative drives to seek out or make up spaces to showcase, share, and critique their own work. Hazelton collects the stories behind these efforts and, in his introduction, retells them in a concise and well-documented narrative. Hazelton himself is, at times, a protagonist in these stories as he directly participated in the creation and publication of literary journals, the most notable being the now defunct Rupturas from Montreal. Usually Hazelton was the principal English or French translator of works by writers such as Jorge Etcheverry and Margarita Feliciano, now featured in Latinocanadá, a testament to his lifelong dedication to the study and promotion of Latin American writers and their literary creations.

Latinocanadá is the latest tangible effort by Hazelton to promote Latin American literature in translation. More importantly, Latinocanadá is a veritable chronicle that traces and documents the history of Latin American literary production in Canada, a compelling fact that guarantees its selection as a primary title on any serious list of essential books on this subject.

Victor R. Rivas

Victor R. Rivas...

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