Adalberto Ortiz: From Margin to Center by Marvin Alfonso Lewis (review)

In the introduction to his book Adalberto Ortiz: From Margin to Center, Marvin Lewis affirms Adalberto Ortiz as one of the most gifted writers in Ecuador and all of Latin America, comparing him to the likes of García Márquez, Lezama Lima, Quiroga, Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa, and Nicolás Guillén. In spite of his talents, Ortiz bears the distinction of having been given little attention outside his native land. The present study is Marvin Lewis’s stab at closing a lacuna in the Afro-Hispanic literary canon by arguing for Ortiz’s inclusion. Lewis states that this correction is due to the more than deserved merit and recognition of Ortiz both within his native Ecuador and within Afro-Hispanic literary circles in the United States. Lewis analyzes Ortiz’s prose, poetry, and short story genres with the aim of tracing his evolution, indicated in the book’s subtitle, from a localized Afrocentric focus to a more universalized approach. For Lewis, Ortiz’s internalization of the negativity associated with blackness leads him to privilege European aspects of his heritage over the African (20). This, Lewis believes, accounts for the typically Eurocentric attitude in Ortiz’s trajectory, which supports his assertion of a move from the marginal to centrality.

Lewis’s book is divided into five chapters (including the introduction and conclusion) that focus on the prose, poetry, and short stories of Adalberto Ortiz. The introduction and conclusion make the case above for the inclusion of Ortiz’s work in the canon of Afro-Hispanic literature. The three middle chapters each focus on a genre within Ortiz’s oeuvre with a close reading of the themes and structures of the major titles. Chapter one analyzes Ortiz’s three prose novels, from his now classic Juyungo: Historia de un negro, una isla y otros negros [Juyungo: The Story of a Black Man, an Island, and Other Blacks] (1943), the lesser known El espejo y la ventana [The Mirror and the Window] (1967), to La envoltura del sueno [The Wrapping of the Dream] (1982). The three novels demonstrate a gradual progression from a mostly ethnic (black) perspective within an idyllic forest setting, to a class-conscious urban setting where different types of poor people rebel against the oppression of the ruling classes, to the playful and parodic discourse of the postmodern La envoltura del sueño, a play masquerading as a novel that examines the violence of the urban experience in its materialism, lack of moral purpose relating to religion, sexual behavior, violence, and social justice.

The second chapter studies the poetic works of Adalberto Ortiz, consisting of Tierra, son y tambor [Earth, Song, and Drum] (1945), Camino y Puerto de la angustia [Road and Port of Anguish] (1945), El vigilante insepulto [The Unburied Watchman] (1954), Fórmulas: Poemario “sin poesía” [Formulas: Poetry Collection “Without Poetry”] (1973), and La niebla encendida: Poesía mezclada [The Illuminated Fog: Mixed Poetry] (1984). Of all the chapters, this is Lewis’s most detailed, as it analyzes thematic content, lyricism, and structure of several poems from each of the five volumes. Lewis also provides an overview of the five works, characterizing them in terms of their evolution in Ortiz’s poetic universe: from the traditionalist (and negrista) themes of his early poetry, to the non-Afrocentric and modernist tones of El vigilante insepulto, to the surrealism, irony, and parody of La niebla encendida.

Three volumes of short stories make up the third chapter, entitled, “The Short Stories of Adalberto Ortiz: The Regional, the Folkloric, and the International.” They comprise Los contrabandistas: Viñetas del autor [The Smugglers: Sketches by the Author] (1945), La mala espalda: Once relatos de aqui y de allá [The Evil Eye: Tales from Here and There] (1952), and La entundada y cuentos variados [The Bewitched and Varied Stories] (1971). La mala espalda is a revised version of “Los contrabandistas” that includes ten new short stories, while La entundada adds nine new stories to...