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Latin American Literature

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today
ISSUE

35

SEPTEMBER
2025
In our thirty-fifth issue, we return to one of the focal points of LALT’s mission: the art of translation. On the cover, we feature prolific literary translator and poet Robin Myers, who is responsible for bringing the work of many essential Latin American writers from Spanish to English. This issue also includes previews of new or forthcoming books in translation by Gabriela Alemán, Juan José Saer, and Giancarlo Huapaya, plus an exclusive interview with Carlos Fortea, one of the world’s most prominent translators from German to Spanish. Another dossier focuses on Frank Wynne’s new translation of beloved comic strip Mafalda by Quino, with excerpts from the first volume, published by Archipelago Books. Here we share poetry by Janil Uc Tun, Odi Gonzales, and Elvira Hernández, alongside interviews with Leila Guerriero, Javier Cercas, and Diego Recoba, and the winning essay of our latest literary essay contest: “Gleaner of the Minuscule: On Rosario Castellanos” by Mexican writer and educator Xóchitl Tavera.
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Featured Translator:

Robin Myers

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Robin

By Mariana Spada

When Robin approaches a text, she has a remarkable ability to detect, as if in an inverted mirror, layers of meaning that the author herself did not perceive, and that she, in her reading, reveals, illuminates, and transforms. This sort of teamwork can give rise to a particular kind of intellectual intimacy, and Robin has the gift of knowing how to build a conducive space such that this intimacy should develop as fruitfully as possible. It is hard for such complicity not to evolve into some kind of friendship, since friendship, like translation, demands joint effort at interpretation, recreation, and respect. Would it sound strange to say that years later, when I met Robin in person, I felt like I was hugging an old friend?

The Consequences of Sound: On the Poetics of Robin Myers

BY Adalber Salas Hernández

Petirrojo

BY Javier Peñalosa M.

Thoughts on Robin Myers

BY Isabel Zapata

Dossier: Mafalda In English

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

 Photo: …

“Maybe You Can Find Some Use For It”: The Little Girl Who Never Grows Up and Utility in Aid of Social Conscience

By Vanesa Almada Noguerón

Mafalda in English

By Quino

“The anglophone world is ready for Mafalda”: A Conversation with Frank Wynne

By Arthur Malcolm Dixon

Second Annual LALT Literary Essay Contest

WINNING ESSAY: Imperceptible Anatomies

By Guillermo Fajardo

“Imperceptible Anatomies,” by Mexican writer and academic Guillermo Jesús Fajardo Sotelo, is an essay that, from the trigger of a genetic condition, elaborates a penetrating discourse on personal health, the dimensions of  an exceedingly rare pathology, and its links to literary creativity. This is an essay that shows extraordinary balance between the confessional, intellectual inquiry, the clinical aspect, and literary reference points. It likewise represents a minor epic on life and the questions surrounding the demands of the human body—a body, as Fajardo Sotelo calls it himself, that is “anatomically disobedient.”

No one was sure how to act around Pablo Quiñonez, how to look at him, what to say (not that there was anything that could be said, it was horrible what was happening, simple as that). His teachers took pains to pat his head or lay a hand on his shoulder. The gym teacher gave him a big hug. His classmates tried to be close, they sat next to him or hovered nearby, in case he needed anything. The director called him to her office; once there, between the colored plate of San Martín and the wooden crucifix, she offered him some water and talked to him about God.
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Essays

Catastrophic Philosophy

By Alberto Penadés

WINNING ESSAY: Gleaner of the Minuscule: On Rosario Castellanos

By Xóchitl Tavera

Juan Emar and the Gift of Being Unread

By Marcelo Rioseco

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interviews

From Dostoevsky to Pope Francis: A Conversation with Javier Cercas on El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo

By Natalia Consuegra & Juan Camilo Rincón

“All books are complex when it comes to the writing process”: A Conversation with Leila Guerriero

By Adriana Pacheco

“The negation of the strange leads to an absolute impoverishment of lived experience”: A Conversation with Diego Recoba

By Jorge Sarasola

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World Literature from WLT

Criticism Is Literature. Why Is It Vanishing?

By Adam Morgan

Literary people always laugh at this line because it feels true. In the public imagination, authors are gods. They forge new universes where before there was only darkness. Critics, on the other hand, are embittered antagonists, like Lucifer cursing the sky in Paradise Lost: “O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams.”

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today
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New Releases

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Domestic Life is saturated with a theme I find eminently relatable, as I think many readers will agree: the imposter syndrome that plagues all of us who dedicate ourselves to creative endeavors. Here, Marcelo’s stand-in (Mauricio) is literally haunted by the ghost of Roberto Bolaño, who pops in every so often from the romantic deserts of poetic oblivion to poke fun at him for having fish filets for dinner and remind him of the wild, bohemian essence of pure literary impulse he is allowing to shrivel and wane as he lives the comfortable, (it must be said) domestic life of a poet-cum-professor at a U.S. university. After seven poetry books (and this one’s being recognized as the best of its pub year), Marcelo still cannot help but wonder: Do I write poems, or am I a poet? Does the former necessarily mean the latter? I can’t pretend to offer any answers here; I have translated a great deal over the past ten years, but I still find myself doubting whether or not I am a translator in much the same way. To use an appropriately homey idiom, I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I invite anyone who has read this far to turn to the poems and decide for themselves.

Arthur Malcolm Dixon

Domestic Life is saturated with a theme I find eminently relatable, as I think many readers will agree: the imposter syndrome that plagues all of us who dedicate ourselves to creative endeavors. Here, Marcelo’s stand-in (Mauricio) is literally haunted by the ghost of Roberto Bolaño, who pops in every so often from the romantic deserts of poetic oblivion to poke fun at him for having fish filets for dinner and remind him of the wild, bohemian essence of pure literary impulse he is allowing to shrivel and wane as he lives the comfortable, (it must be said) domestic life of a poet-cum-professor at a U.S. university. After seven poetry books (and this one’s being recognized as the best of its pub year), Marcelo still cannot help but wonder: Do I write poems, or am I a poet? Does the former necessarily mean the latter? I can’t pretend to offer any answers here; I have translated a great deal over the past ten years, but I still find myself doubting whether or not I am a translator in much the same way. To use an appropriately homey idiom, I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I invite anyone who has read this far to turn to the poems and decide for themselves.

Arthur Malcolm Dixon

fiction

Sueños familiares

By Ricardo Sumalavia

Un fragmento de La vida por delante

By Claudia Lama Andonie

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Editor's Pick

The Challenge of the Humanities

By Luis Beltrán Almería

The response to the crisis experienced by the humanities is usually an apologetic discourse from its actors. Defending the irreplaceable character of the humanities undeniably has meaning, but the limitations on all apologetic discourse are also undeniable. Apology moves in parallel with the decadence of its object. What is decaying is defended. And, even worse, with this defense it is only possible to attract those who are part of its sphere. Only those who are already convinced applaud apologetic discourse. Critics will point out the economic, social, and cultural limitations of this discourse and, above all, of its object. And, in fact, not only do humanistic disciplines attract less of an audience and less money, less investment, and produce less, but they are unable to follow the innovative impetus of great science. And, beyond this, they are unable to explain the causes of their own unstoppable disparagement.

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today
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poetry

“Angel of Yucay” and other poems

By Odi Gonzales

“expulsion” and other poems

By Silvia Goldman & Mary Hawley

Three Poems from Honey for a Donkey’s Mouth

By Nilton Santiago

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Indigenous Literature

An Excerpt from Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory

By Janil Uc Tun

.

my mother used the plant to weave hammocks
or to soothe insect bites
she tied it to taller trees
so it would consume the white plagues.
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today
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BOOK REVIEWS

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Up from Georgia-lcd de Luis Correa-Díaz

By Vanesa Cañete-Jurado
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

No podemos explicar por qué lloramos de Giovanna Pollarolo

By Carmen Ollé
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Geografía de un exilio de Nicolás Bernales

By Santiago Elordi
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Noche oscura del cuerpo/Dark Night of the Body de Jorge Eduardo Eielson

By César Ferreira

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

La oscura disonancia de Piedad Bonnett

By Miguel Gomes
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Letras torcidas. Un perfil de Mariana Callejas de Juan Cristóbal Peña

By Horacio Javier Figueroa Vidal
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Up from Georgia-lcd de Luis Correa-Díaz

By Vanesa Cañete-Jurado
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

No podemos explicar por qué lloramos de Giovanna Pollarolo

By Carmen Ollé
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Geografía de un exilio de Nicolás Bernales

By Santiago Elordi
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Noche oscura del cuerpo/Dark Night of the Body de Jorge Eduardo Eielson

By César Ferreira

Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

La oscura disonancia de Piedad Bonnett

By Miguel Gomes
Latin American Literature Latin American Literature Today

Letras torcidas. Un perfil de Mariana Callejas de Juan Cristóbal Peña

By Horacio Javier Figueroa Vidal
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Brazilian Literature

Belo Horizonte, the end of March 2020, the end of the world?

By Ana Elisa Ribeiro

The Mistress

By Carla Bessa

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Translation Previews and New Releases

Smoke, translated by Dick Cluster

By Gabriela Alemán

The Event, translated by Helen R. Lane

By Juan José Saer

[gamerover], translated by Ryan Greene

By Giancarlo Huapaya

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On Translation

The Translation of the Poem

By Diana Bellessi

“The translator’s job is to tauten language without breaking it”: A Conversation with Carlos Fortea

By Eduardo Suárez Fernández-Miranda

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Back Issues

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