Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces by Cecily Raynor (review)

Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces situates local narratives of recent works of Latin American literature within a global framework with a focus on the decades from 1990 to 2011. It emphasizes the economic, social, and political upheavals and changes that characterize the forces of globalization in the region, and examines the transformational responses of literary constructions to an era of intensive global integration affecting the Americas. The study references literary critics and scholars along with their theories and views on globalization, but challenges “the tropes of unilaterally accelerated mobility and unification that dominate the popular imaginary of globalization in Latin America” (8). The author interprets local as being beyond a specific area and encompassing both time and space, in essence belonging to a moment.

The works studied include four Brazilian novels, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño and its theatrical adaptation by Àlex Rigola, and a Mexican novel, Los ingrávidos. The Brazilian texts are Estive em Lisboa e lembrei de você by Luiz Ruffato, Mar paraguayo by Wilson Bueno, Teatro by Bernardo Carvalho, and Harmada by Gilberto Noll. The Appendix includes an interview with Luiz Ruffato. Chapters are organized thematically as a way of showing the variety of techniques that writers utilized to connect the local setting with a larger global context. Chapter one, “Migration Chronotopes: Imagining Time and Space in Two Brazilian novels,” covers Ruffato’s account about a young man who migrates from Minas Gerais to Lisbon, and Bueno’s story about a protagonist who crosses geographical terrain and linguistic borders that encompass Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní. Chapter two, “Speed Control: The Politics of Mobility in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Its Theatrical Adaption by Àlex Rigola,” examines how the contrast between speed and stillness in the novel translates into a performance piece that employs music and film plus texts and images projected on a screen or backdrop to convey the characteristics of 2666. Chapter three, “Ambivalent Spaces: Allegories of Ruin in Bernardo Carvalho’s Teatro and Gilberto Noll’s Harmada,” looks at how the two works use ambiguous space and “ruin,” with ruin understood as sites where decay and collapse are evident. Chapter four, “Another City and Another Life: Writing Multitudes in Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos,” focuses on a novel with multiple narrators and city settings. In chapter two, eight color photographs of the play enhance the text and chapter three has a color photo of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City to illustrate the concept of ruin in several distinct dimensions. A brief conclusion ties up the theoretical and thematic threads. Interspersed in the descriptions of the works analyzed are treatments of translation, female protagonists, and multilingual borderlands.

Throughout the book, theorists on a wide range of literary approaches and interventions inform the analysis, and each chapter begins with an epigraph. The extensive text notes for each chapter, and thorough documentation reflect meticulous preparation by the author. A repetitive reliance on the vocabulary of selected contemporary literary criticism makes this text less attractive for the general reader. Specialists on the Latin American novel and those with an interest in Brazilian literature constitute the primary audience for this book.