This article discusses the representation of news media in two crime novels by Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro: "Betibú" (2011) and "Las maldiciones" (2017). It proposes that in these two novels, Piñeiro addresses both the limitations and the possibilities of activist journalism in the twenty-first century. Piñeiro's work…

A central theme throughout Machado de Assis's works is the way characters look at each other inside and outside houses. This article argues that vision, race, and houses define his narrative strategies in the short stories "Pai contra Mãe" and "O Caso da Vara," and the novels "Dom Casmurro," "Memórias póstumas de…

By reclaiming the power of self-definition and the use of the term "travesti" to designate their unique experience within the Latin American cultural, economic, and political context, "travesti" intellectuals have fought the dehumanization of their personhood. In her novel "Las malas," the Argentine author Camila Sosa…

Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel "Ifigenia" (1924), Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to…

Following several calls in recent scholarship for increased attention to the study of the Central American diaspora in the United States, this article offers readings of Honduran-born author Roberto Quesada's novels "Big Banana" (1999) and "Nunca entres por Miami" (2003). Written in New York City, where he has resided since…

This article examines Julio Cortázar's short story "Las babas del diablo" from a visual perspective and at the intersection of Roland Barthes's ideas on photography and Severo Sarduy's theory on the Neobaroque. I propose that in "Las babas del diablo" photography and the Neobaroque--two seemingly unrelated concepts--interact…

This essay seeks to situate Eugenio Aguirre's novel, "Isabel Moctezuma," in the ongoing intertextual debate over the place of la Malinche in Mexican history and consciousness. As the title of the novel suggests, the protagonist is not Malinche, but rather another indigenous woman, the first-born daughter of the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma…

This thesis is intended to delve into the one-and-a-half generation of Cuban-American's bicultural identity in Virgil Suarez's novel "Going Under." Through an interpretation from the perspective of diaspora consciousness, this paper will identify how the main character constructs his individual identity through a network of usually…

Despite apparent connections between Brazilian and Spanish American narratives, comparative scholarship has only recently begun to investigate actively these important points of contact. In this study, we introduce a vital crossover between the two traditions, involving Juan Rulfo and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Rulfo's outspoken affinity for…

In this article, Adria Frizzi provides a brief overview of Fred Ellison's work in the field of literary translation. Frizzi does so by outlining Ellison's trajectory as a translator--highlighting how his choices in this area of his scholarship fit into a broader, multipronged approach to the study and diffusion of the language, culture, and…

Carmen Montañez's novel "Pelo bueno, pelo malo" acknowledges the struggle that some Caribbean individuals face in accepting their blackness. The novel integrates the union of ancestors with the living, thus reflecting the Bantu concept known as "Muntu". This Puerto Rican novel presents a deep social problem of internalized…

This current study explores the relationship between visual technology (cinema and photography) and a metanarrative preoccupation with the craft of literary narration in two texts by Pablo Palacio (Ecuador, 1906-47). In his novella "Débora" (1927), Palacio employs the language of cinema (e.g., the cinematograph, the cinema, references to…

This article charts the similarities between the first short story appearance in 1839 of what later became Cirilo Villaverde's well-known nineteenth-century novel, "Cecilia Valdés" (1882), and Anselmo Suárez y Romero's "Carlota Valdés" (1838). The study considers the circle of influence in Cuba for writers during this time…

In her 2010 novel "Sangra por la herida," the Cuban novelist, poet, and essayist Mirta Yáñez constructs a panoramic view of metropolitan Havana, following the model of Latin American fiction starting in the 1980s based on a revised version of the detective novel. "Sangra por la herida" functions best as a narrative that…

Historically, black women's hair has been a site where power and social relations are defined. In Puerto Rico, cultural production has been critical in perpetuating as well as in contesting the prevailing white European ideal of beauty and its impact on women's hairstyling practices. Nevertheless, the link between aesthetic preferences and the…