Nicolás Guillén's "El gran zoo" (1967), illustrated by Fayad Jamís, was the first Hispanic bestiary to prominently feature humans in a space traditionally inhabited by beasts. Guillén's verses transform the bestiary from a didactic tool used for centuries to instruct and uniform society into a subversive text that openly denounces the…

Cristina Fernández Cubas's short story "La nueva vida" ("La habitación de Nona" 2015) foregrounds the play between truth and fiction, past and present, and death and identity, where the widowed protagonist finds meaning not in philosophy, but in physics. Widowed in 2007 at age 62, Fernández Cubas focalized this story through…

In the context of Latin American Studies (LAS) and from a sociohistorical perspective, the author proposes a non-credit workshop in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Its general aim is to raise students' awareness of the interrelationships between coloniality and the geopolitics of knowledge through fiction.…

This article focuses on one aspect of a literacy research project: how reading and language enable embodied processes that allow for fluidity and becomings outside of the static, molar normative discourse in society and consequently in language education. I explain how one research participant continues becoming outside of white settler-colonial…

Ventura García Calderón (1886-1959) was a Peruvian man of letters and a diplomat who was at the center of the hispanophone community in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. Known as a proponent of Spanish American literature, García Calderón achieved a global celebrity for his dramatic, colorful, and ironic short stories. These…

The detrimental effects of neoliberalism accompany globalization. The paradoxes generated by the global-regional gap have revealed local cultures' double vulnerability to national and international development. Miguel Pereira fictionalizes this complex phenomenon in the film "Verónico Cruz. La deuda interna" (Argentina, 1988). Inspired…

As an area of research that continues to develop, the study of linguistics worldwide presents the opportunity for the improvement of cross-cultural communication through education and research. Language educators are charged with the task of instructing students to effectively communicate across cultures in a multi-lingual world. The…

An annotated list of outstanding fiction and nonfiction books for children is presented, including works recently published in Spain, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, Great Britain, and the United States. The 17 books should appeal to Spanish-speaking readers as well as readers on the elementary school level. (LB)

Nick Joaquin, a leading English-language writer in the Philippines, explores the cultural construction of self though fiction that centers on the lives of the Spanish-speaking elite. Joaquin seeks to interpret the self as a dynamic process, forever exploring, interrogating, and reaffirming itself against the background of Philippine culture. (25…

Describes children's literature suitable for young Hispanic students as well as English-speaking readers who want to learn Spanish. (FL)