I thought these stories were really great because it is a perspective that in theory is said to reject the genre we have spent the whole term learning about "magical realism". Having a glance at the other side creates a broader understanding and I find to be very insightful and helpful in having an open mind to what are the intents of the stories.
McOndo and its collection of stories is one that I think the modern world and my generation can relate to it much easier than the stories of Asturias, Carpentier and Garcia Marquez. Being born and raised in North America, the relationship between the United State and the Latin world in McOndo is not just something I try to understand,like in "el reino de este mundo" where I tried to put myself in that time and place. For the global relations in McOndo, I'm part of the modernized world and can view myself as a primary source. I think this aspect is perhaps the most important for me in understanding McOndo. I'm not so much an outsider. Cities play an important role. They are the central metropolises of the mass culture, the nucleus of the global interaction. Unlike the other stories with rural settings. McOndo imposes the urban setting at the the heart of culture and the technologies that identify the culture. Another element in the stories are of graphic sexual encounters. This for some reason reminded me of "Cien anos de soledad", maybe because of all the sexual relations in the novel. Non the less I began looking at the similarities verses the differences between the two works. This might have been the opposite of what we were supposed to do but non the less. The violence and sex are themes not dismissed in McOndo nor however in Macondo. I began to view McOndo not quite as a rejection of Macondo...but perhaps a continuation. Which rejects the idea of Marquez, Latin America's lack in progression. McOndo is part of the evolucion of Latin America. It is a switch from a culture highlighting magical realism to a culture where the magic is something understandable and tangible, not fanatical but something very real and very normal.
I agree that ending the course with McOndo definitely broadened our horizons of what type of Latin American literature is out there. Did you find it strange that there was no female author representation in this book which is supposed to capture the variety of these unknown latin american authors? It's interesting that you took McOndo as a continuation of Macondo....an evolution, not a revolution.
ReplyDeleteHi Laura!
ReplyDeleteyeah, it was definitely interesting to get another perspective of Latin American litterature because the magical realism style of writing has been so well-known that it sort of overshadows all the other authors and novels, hence I am very glad this was included in the course!
mhm mhm..
ReplyDeleteI think McOndo helps us understand what magic realism is mainly because this way, we are not only learning what is magic realism, but also what is not. So there's a smaller gray, unknown area. I also think that McOndo isn't really against magic realism. Instead, it is just saying that latin american literature has more than just magic realism, it has a lots of other works that are JUST as good as the magic realism ones... if that makes any sense... :P