Pat Mora - International Board on Books for Young People

Feature Articles: Pat Mora: Transcending the Continental Divide One Book at a Time • Learning in Francisco Hinojosa’s Children’s Fiction • María Elena Walsh and the Art of Subversive Children’s Literature • The New Children of Resistance: Becoming a Child through the Stories Told by the EZLN • Magical Realist Moments in Malín Alegría’s Border Town Series • Chilean Children’s Literature and National Identity: Post-Dictatorship Discourses of Chileanness through the Representation of Indigenous People • El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in The Meaning of Consuelo

52.3 (2014)

The Journal of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young PeopleCopyright © 2014 by Bookbird, Inc. Reproduction of articles in Bookbird requires permission in writing from the editor.

Editor: Roxanne Harde, University of Alberta—Augustana Faculty (Canada)

Address for submissions and other editorial correspondence: [email protected]

Bookbird’s editorial office is supported by the Augustana Faculty at the University of Alberta, Camrose, Alberta, Canada.

Editorial Review Board: Peter E. Cumming, York University (Canada); Debra Dudek, University of Wollongong (Australia); Libby Gruner, University of Richmond (USA); Helene Høyrup, Royal School of Library & Information Science (Denmark); Judith Inggs, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa); Ingrid Johnston, University of Albert, Faculty of Education (Canada); Shelley King, Queen’s University (Canada); Helen Luu, Royal Military College (Canada); Michelle Martin, University of South Carolina (USA); Beatriz Alcubierre Moya, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (Mexico); Lissa Paul, Brock University (Canada); Laura Robinson, Royal Military College (Canada); Bjorn Sundmark, Malmö University (Sweden); Margaret Zeegers, University of Ballarat (Australia);

Board of Bookbird, Inc. (an Indiana not-for-profit corporation): Valerie Coghlan (Ireland), President; Ellis Vance (USA), Treasurer; Junko Yokota (USA), Secretary; Hasmig Chahinian (France), Angela Lebedeva (Russia)

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Production: Design and layout by Bill Benson, Texas, USA Printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pennsylvania, USA

Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature (ISSN 0006-7377) is a refereed journal published quarterly in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall by IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, and distributed by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4363 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices.

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IBBY Executive Committee 2012-2014: Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin (Malaysia), President; Linda Pavonetti Vice President (USA); Hasmig Chahinian (France), Vice President; Marilar Aleixandre (Spain); Gülçin Alpöge (Turkey); Nadia El Kholy (Egypt); Kiyoko Matsuoka (Japan), Azucena Galindo (Mexico); Angela Lebedeva (Russia); Akoss Ofori-mensah (Ghana); Timotea Vrablova (Slovakia), Voting Members; María Jesús Gil (Spain), Andersen Jury President; Elizabeth Page (Switzerland), Executive Director; Ellis Vance (USA), Treasurer; Roxanne Harde (Canada), Bookbird Editor.

IBBY may be contacted at Nonnenweg 12 Postfach, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland, tel: +4161 272 29 17 fax: +4161 272 27 57 email: [email protected] <www.ibby.org>.

Bookbird is indexed in Library Literature, Library and Information Abstracts (LISA), Children’s Book Review Index, and the MLA International Bibliography.

Cover image by Rafael Lopez, from Book Fiesta! by Pat Mora. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. The cover illustration by Rafael Lopez is used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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Feat

ure

Art

icle

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Pat Mora: Transcending the Continental Divide One Book at a Time Denise Davila | 1

Learning in Francisco Hinojosa’s Children’s Fiction Mónica Bernal Bejarle | 13

María Elena Walsh and the Art of Subversive Children’s Literature Alina Dunbar | 22

The New Children of Resistance: Becoming a Child through the Stories Told by the EZLN Rodrigo Mier González Cadaval and Irene Fenoglio Limón | 31

Magical Realist Moments in Malín Alegría’s Border Town Series Amy Cummins and Tiffany Cano | 42

Chilean Children’s Literature and National Identity: Post-Dictatorship Discourses of Chileanness through the Representation of Indigenous People Isabel Ibaceta G. | 53

El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in The Meaning of Consuelo Hilary Brewster | 65

Editorial

IntroductionMay Everyone Really Mean Everyone: Interpreting Reality through Our Own Patterns Beatriz Alcubierre Moya | v

Roxanne Harde | iii

To Arrange Life among Books Socorro Venegas | 76

Puerto Rican Children’s Literature and the Need for Afro-Puerto Rican Stories Carmen Milagros Torres-Rivera | 81Ch

ildre

n &

Thei

r Boo

ks

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Conquistando a Lindolfo [Wooing Lindolfo] by Rosalba Guzman Soriano Gaby Vallejo Canedo | 41

What a Party! by Ann María Machado Illus. Hélène Moreau Samantha Christensen | 64

Los Diferentes [The different Ones] by Paula Bossio Deena Hinshaw | 75

The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf edited by Patty Paine, Jesse Ulmber, and Michael Hersrud Roxanne Harde | 80

Hojas [Leaves] and Me gustan las vacas [I like cows] by Lara Enrique and Luis García Deena Hinshaw | 103

La incredible tía Dorita [The Amazing Aunt dorita] by Rosario Moyano Aguirre Gaby Vallejo Canedo | 113

Danny, Who Fell In A Hole by Carl Fagan Taylor Kraayenbrink | 114

Gizli Kapı [Secret Door, Nightmare Forest] by Burcu Unsal, cover illus. by Şahin Karakoç Tülin Kozikoglu | 115

Hektor in zrela hruška [Hector and the Ripe Pear] by Dim Zupan, illus. by Andreja Gregorič Gaja Kos | 116

Song of Gipsy’s Tar by Mohammad Hadi Mohammadi Bahar Eshragh | 116

Post

card

s

Books on Books

Focus IBBY

Christiane Raabe and Jochen Weber | 94

Elizabeth Page | 104

Storytelling and Metaphor in Science Communication Sergio de Régules | 86

Young Adult Literature in Bolivia Gaby Vallejo Canedo | 91 Lett

ers

© 2014 BY BOOkBIRd, Inc.

Editorial

Dear Bookbird Readers,

This issue of Bookbird comes to you with greetings from the 34th IBBY congress, which will be held in México city, 10-13 September 2014. Jella Lepman, founder of IBBY

and the International Youth Library in Munich, would have been pleased with the conference theme. chosen by IBBY México, the theme is Que Todos Signifique Todos / May Everyone Really Mean Everyone. The full name of México’s IBBY Section is A leer IBBY México, and this is an organization that has put children’s reading at the forefront of all its endeavors. Since its establishment in 1970, IBBY México has worked to encourage joyful encounters between children and good books. This issue’s gorgeous cover and the illus-tration above come from Pat Mora’s Book Fiesta, illustrated by Mexican artist Rafael Lopez. These joyful illustrations are fitting accompaniments for an issue about joyful encounters between children and Latin American literature for them, something fully promoted by A leer IBBY México.

Bookbird Editor

Roxanne Harde is a Professor of English and a McCalla University

Professor at the University of Alberta, Augustana Faculty. She studies and

teaches American literature and culture. She has recently published

Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture (Lexington 2013),

and her essays have appeared in several journals, including International

Research in Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, Christianity and Literature, Legacy, Jeunesse, Critique, Feminist Theology, and Mosaic, and several edited collections, including

Enterprising Youth and To See the Wizard.

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This organization’s many activities include organizing courses and workshops on children’s literature for parents, teachers and librarians; offering certificate programs in Reading Promotion and Literary Text Analysis; and regularly publishing a Recommended Books Guide, Leer de la mano [Reading Hand in Hand] and Rumbo a la lectura [Towards Reading]. A leer IBBY México also offers a specialized library of literature for children and youth, literature that serves educators and researchers, and it works with other organizations in México and inter-nationally on special projects, including working with various publishers on their catalogues for children and youth. A leer IBBY México has also created more than forty Bunkos, small community libraries intended for recreational reading for children and youngsters in various marginalized areas of México. These spaces offer children quality books and reading sessions. Since 2005, its Books Between Us project has sent volunteers to read aloud in public primary schools, and in 2011 the organization produced dVds of Mexican picture books in sign language.

Overall, A leer IBBY México is an organization dedicated to reading and books for children as a means to social renewal, with a particular and admirable focus on inclusion and on promoting equal access to literacy as one way to build a more just society. It comes as no surprise, then, that it has chosen the theme of reading as an inclusive experience for the 34th congress, which will explore stereotypes in children’s literature, the role of literature in building an inclusive culture, and the creation of art and literature from a standpoint of diversity. The many keynote speakers, presenters, and participants will consider inclusive models, strategies and practices, as well as common practices of exclusion, in the promotion of texts and reading for children.The congress organizers have put together a vibrant program that will include the presentation of the Hans christian Andersen Awards, sponsored by nami Island Inc., and the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Awards, which are sponsored by Asahi Shinbun.

I was especially pleased when a member of A leer IBBY México, dr. Beatriz Alcubierre Moya, accepted my invitation to guest edit this issue of Bookbird and introduce our readers to children’s literature in Latin America. I know you’ll enjoy her comprehensive introduction.

See you in México city!

52.4 (2014) HcA 2014 Winners & Shortlist53.1 (2015) Machines, Monsters, & Animals: Posthuman children’s Literature53.2 (2015) Open Themed

Our Forthcoming Issues:


May Everyone Really M

ean Everyone: Interpreting Reality through Our O

wn Patterns

by BEATRIZ ALCUBIERRE MOYA

Beatriz Alcubierre Moya is the author of Ciudadanos del futuro [Citizens of the

Future], a history of children’s books and periodicals written during the nineteenth

century in México. She received her PhD in History at El Colegio de México. Her research addresses the history of

childhood, as well as children’s literature in México. She has received grants from the National Fund for Culture and Arts

and the Mexican Center for Writers. She is a full time Professor in the History

Department in Morelos State University (México).

Interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

Gabriel García Márquez

While preparing this introduction, I learned of the death of colombian writer and nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez. Over the following days, a multi-

tude of endearing anecdotes invaded social networks. Apparently, everyone had something to say concerning their own experience of reading “Gabo” (as he is fondly called in México) during early youth. While his work is not considered a part of what is tradition-ally understood as children’s literature, some of his short stories—such as The Happy Summer of Mrs. Forbes, The Very old Man with Enormous Wings and Light is like Water—have been published as children books. However, most admit that his classic novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was the one book that left an indel-ible mark on their lives: a sort of initiation into becoming trained readers. Thus, although not a Mexican author, García Márquez had a great influence not only among writers, but among Mexican people in general. His greatest achievement consisted precisely in

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letting us see the huge coincidences between the magical, yet realistic, way we view the world from México, colombia, or any other country in Latin America. Since the appearance of García Márquez’s early novels, during the mid-twentieth century, magical realism has become a vehicle of identification for Latin American culture as a whole.

Very few artistic expressions signify such a radical break from the traditional canon. Magical realism is an essential component of post-colonial literary practice. More than a literary style, it embodies a philosophy, based on the recognition of otherness as an essential part of oneself. Empowered by its limitless logic, magical realism pushes itself

apart from those principles imposed by the literary canon that has prevailed throughout the history of literature and supported the political hegemony of national states and international powers. Up against this exclusive and excluding unit, magical realism advocates for inclusive-ness. It aims to explore and transgress political, geograph-ical, generic, and ontological boundaries, allowing the co-existence of spaces, worlds, entities, and systems that would be irreconcilable in other forms of fiction (Faris and Zamora 5-7). Magical realism focuses on plotting a narrative that interweaves reality and imagination, gracefully erasing the line between them. Through this discursive strategy—so common and even necessary in Latin American everyday life—the narrator authenti-cates fantastic events by presenting them as natural facts. By building bridges between different worlds, storytellers have served as decolonizing agents, lending their voices to marginal whisperers, submerged traditions, and emer-gent literatures (Faris).

Let the sad news of the departure of our beloved Gabo provide us with a new excuse to reflect on the way in

which the development of these marvelous and spontaneous narratives have impacted children’s literature in both México and Latin America. Rather than proposing a topic of discussion, this special issue of Bookbird expresses a necessary claim for inclusiveness: “may everyone really mean everyone.” Accordingly, we have gathered seven articles addressing the construction and affirmation of collective identities through children’s books in the neocolonial context; more specifically, in México and Latin America. Each of these pieces focuses on the strategies used by chil-dren’s authors, since the 1960s, to resist narrative models imposed by the traditional canon, and proposes new parameters for understanding childhood beyond nationalist concepts. From different approaches, these papers discuss the notion of boundary: in the geographical sense of “border,” in the renegotiation of marginality, and in the redefinition of limits between the real and the imaginary.

On the one hand, in the case of boundaries, México is particularly interesting because of its proximity to the United States and the large number of Mexicans who have crossed the northern border in search of

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work and a more prosperous life, creating a Mexican-American commu-nity with its own traditions and identity. On the other hand, the presence of more than fifty indigenous nations across México, each one with its own language, makes it rather difficult to imagine our culture and iden-tity in terms of exclusiveness and nationalism. Neverthe-less, the idea of a unified “Mexican identity” has haunted political leaders since the early years of the independent period, turning childhood into the matrix of a promised national unity.

Since the second half of nineteenth century, the canon of Mexican children’s literature has been built on the base of foreign models, which have been translated and adapted to local contexts in order to strengthen national identity among future citizens. The spirit of deeply nationalistic and liberal works—such as de Amicis’ Italian Cuore and the French Simon de Nantua by Jussieu, among many others—have been widely adopted by Mexican writers, publishers and illustrators. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution brought an extended period of violence, as well as a profound process of changes in national culture. Between 1920 and 1960, a frantic search for “true Mexican identity” (as if such a thing really existed) shook up the world of literature, visual arts, music, and mass media. The authors of children’s books turned their attention to popular culture in order to put together a literary corpus that could be considered as “strictly Mexican.” Among them was the chiapas writer Blanca Lydia Trejo, who published thirteen titles between 1935 and 1959, the last of which was a collection of indigenous legends for children. She also wrote a history of Mexican children’s literature, in which she said:

I wanted to visit every corner of México, and learn all its inde-scribable legends. To reach those ranches hidden among the mountains, where the fertile imagination of countrymen has created many beings, with whom they share the miracle of corn and poppy. I wanted to descend through the serenity of its valleys, where the land, sometimes wet and sometimes warm, brings forth perennial coffee bushes or nopales, but in whose polychromy one can hear the weeping of the goddess Cihucoath, which has come down to us with the name of La Llorona.

As shown in this excerpt from her book, Trejo could not help but identify nation with territory. Her notion of the “Mexican being”—as well as almost everyone else’s in that time—was inseparable from the geographical boundaries that surrounded it.

Following the 1968 student movement and its bloody outcome, the Mexican fiesta came to a tragic end. Revolutionary nationalism lost its strength and legitimacy, while the Latin American boom reached the

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Mexican frontier. novelists and poets from all over the continent became world famous through their writings and defense of social action. Many of them reached audiences and markets beyond Latin America through translation and travel, and sometimes through exile. Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Rulfo, carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, among many others, strongly opposed the ideology of nineteenth-century nationalism and the univer-salist philosophical canon that was based on the criteria of Western superiority. This movement represented a rebellion against imposed models of thought, as well as a new form of resistance to neocolonial domination, through specific literary practices.

From that moment on, Mexican children’s literature began a slow process of transforma-tion. While State institu-tions continued promoting nationalism, a new genera-tion of writers preferred to emphasize cultural speci-ficity and difference. The very definition of what it meant to be Mexican was questioned and redefined.

As the political frontier between México and U.S. became more and more strongly guarded, the Mexican population across the border expanded, developing new forms of resistance and solidarity. chicanos raised their voices with a new sense of belonging that looked beyond physical barriers in search of an identity that was rooted in the legendary Aztec past, as well as the most baroque symbols of catholic spiritualism.

Understanding borderlands as “nepantla” implies a process of creating an alternative space to live in. It involves the development of cultural consciousness as way of survival, resisting the mainstream and reinterpreting cultural differ-ence as a place of power. “nepantla is the náhuatl word for an in-between state, the uncertain terrain one crosses when moving from one place to another, when changing from one class, race or sexual orientation to another, when traveling from

one’s current position into a new identity. The Mexican immigrant, at the moment of crossing the barbed wired fence into a hostile ‘paradise’ of el norte, the U.S., is caught in a state of nepantla” (Anzaldúa180). In her article “Pat Mora: Tran-scending Borders across the Americas,” denise davila discusses the concept of nepantla as char-acterized by chicana poet Pat Mora, and defines it as a “conceptual cosmopolitan interface between different cultures, languages, and spirituality, that reflects the territorial interface between nations’ borderlands.” davila also explores Mora’s promotion of “mestiza consciousness” through her picture books, which encourage chicano women and girls to embrace their Spanish and indigenous heritage by becoming familiar with Mexican syncretic traditions and beliefs, such as the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Borderland’s narrative is also the central concern of Amy cummins and Tiffany cano, who discuss “Magical Realist Moments in Malín Alegría’s Border Town Series.” They describe Alegría as “a Mexican American author who writes culturally specific literature about Mexican

American characters.” Alegría’s Border Town series features folk legends (such as La Santa muerte or La Llorona) challenging official reli-gious teachings about unapproved practices and approved gender behavior. As cummings and cano explain, magical realism intensifies the narrative tension, blurring the line between the supernatural and the natural. Through this literary device, Alegría accomplishes two different tasks at the same time: she substantiates Mexican American folklore as a legitimate and necessary mode of knowledge transmission while subverting the discourse of power relations.

Representation of extraordinary characters and even more extraordinary events is one of the main strategies for achieving an aesthetic response among child readers. From this perspec-tive, hyperbole serves as an important device

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to interweave fantasy with reality, combining didactic intent with an aesthetic purpose. Perhaps this is the essential feature of the new generation of children’s authors in México. Francisco Hino-josa is one of the first examples of this transforma-tion of the genre, from mainly didactic to strongly literary. Though, as Mónica Bernal points out in her article “Learning in Francisco Hinojosa’s children’s Fiction,” his narrative can be under-stood as a form of ethics training, “focused on the improvement and transformation of otherness, represented by the narrative scenarios in which the author initially places his characters.” Bernal emphasizes Hinojosa’s vocation as a modern fabulist, as well as his importance within the formation of a national children’s literary canon. She describes Hinojosa’s stories as “moralizing allegories, presenting aggressive and misbehaved characters, which are redirected to normal and accepted frames of behavior.” Usually presented in a grotesque and humorous tone—such as the dreadful protagonist in La Peor señora del mundo [The Worst Lady in the World]—his characters are immersed in absurd and exaggerated situa-tions. Through the use of hyperbole, the need for balance is exposed. The story comes to an end only when the balance has been restored.

The use of rhetorical figures as persuasive training strategies is also the concern of Irene Fenoglio and Rodrigo Mier. In their article “The new children of Resistance: Becoming a child through the Stories Told by the EZLn,” they explore narratives from the Zapatista movement as a resource for the constitution of a particular kind of subject, which they call “the new children of resistance”: “subjects [that] are in the process of exiting or leaving the status of immaturity and dependency in which they have lived with respect to the authority of the State.” As Fenoglio and Mier show, the tales of “Old Antonio” and “don durito de la Lacandona”—originally presented as parts of rebel communiqués—contribute to the redefinition of chiapas native communi-ties as agents of resistance. The article discusses the ontological status of indigenous people as perpetual children, as well as its implications regarding their identity as legitimate citizens.

negotiating identity in a neocolonial context

is also the focus of Hilary Brewster’s article “El Fulano and Patty Swan: Queering the Island in The Meaning of Consuelo.” To analyze Judith Ortiz cofer’s novel, Brewster—as denise davila does—utilizes the concept of “mestiza conscious-ness”; however, in this case, it not only implies ethnic and spiritual mixture, but also the defi-nition and embracement of sexual identity. The character of consuelo, a teenage girl growing up in Americanized Puerto Rico, finds herself at the mercy of dominant paradigms regarding sex, gender, language, culture, race, and nationality. As the story develops, she must define her own cultural and sexual identity, while at the same time experiencing what Brewster describes as “a push and pull of dominance and resistance.”

In politically and culturally repressive envi-ronments, children’s narratives often become spaces of resistance, in which a rebellious posi-tion is easier to express. María Elena Walsh’s stories and musicalized poems are a milestone in the repertoire of Latin American children’s lyrics. With metaphoric language, she incor-porates the concept of resistance and cultural identity into children’s songs during Argentina’s military dictatorship. As Alina dunbar shows in her article “María Elena Walsh and the Art of Subversive children’s Literature,” this prolific author renewed the traditional view of chil-dren’s songs and books in Argentina. Writing under repressive governments, she used chil-dren’s literature as a vehicle to criticize authority. dunbar examines the novel Dailan Kifki, in which the protagonist is the sole voice of reason. By comparing this story to Lewis carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, dunbar points out Walsh’s use of a rhetoric of absurdity as a way to express her transgressive attitude regarding traditional gender roles; “Walsh drew inspiration from carroll but re-crafted his method to fit her own context, providing her readers with new ways of perceiving the world.”

Military dictatorships have a tremendous impact over collective and individual identi-ties. Unfortunately, resistance strategies are not always effective enough to preserve shattered spirits. The destruction of cultural heritage during violent and repressive periods, and its

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subsequent reconstruction, has extensive conse-quences for notions of memory and identity. In her article, “chilean children’s Literature and national Identity: Post-dictatorship discourses of chileanness through the Representation of Indigenous People,” Isabel Ibaceta analyzes images of aboriginality created in chilean narra-tives for children after 1989, describing the way in which cultural practices and geographical motifs drive the renovated, post-dictatorship discourses of national identity. As Ibaceta argues, through representations of idealized indigenous nations, as well as the depiction of geographical environ-ment and natural landscapes, these texts address the value of cultural heritage. She also discusses the political implications of this nation-building discourse, based on the valuation of multicultur-alism, “which can stand for a model of a more promising and respectful (ideologically, cultur-ally and environmentally) society.”

Following the articles, this issue includes several columns: in children & Their Books, Socorro Venegas discusses her role as director of the national Reading Rooms Program in México, and carmen Milagros surveys Puerto Rican children’s literature and emphasizes the need for more African-Puerto Rican texts. Our Letters columns come from Sergio de Régules, who discusses storytelling and science in the Mexican context, and from Gaby Vallejo, who surveys young adult literature in Bolivia. The International Youth Library in Munich has provided several fine reviews of scholarly books on children’s literatur in the Books on Books section. We have several postcard reviews of new books for children and young adults throughout the issue, which concludes with Liz Page’s Focus IBBY. In it, Liz brings us up to date on IBBY’s many activities to promote children’s books around the world.

In sum, each of the pieces in this issue of Bookbird is an invitation to consider the social

function of children’s literature in terms of inclu-siveness. However, this assertion goes beyond the obvious. As magical realism has taught us, it is not only about including the “other,” but more about recognizing him (or her, or them) as an essential part of oneself. To do this, we may follow García Márquez’s example and interpret reality through our own patterns, building our identities on the basis of our own experience, making use of humor, nonsense and metaphor, in order to create a poetic of otherness that includes us all, so that everyone really means everyone…

Works Cited

Children’s Booksde Amicis, Edmondo. Cuore. 1886. Milan:

Rizzoli, 1965. Print. Jussieu, Laurent de. Simon de Nantua, ou le

marchand forain. Paris: colas, 1880. Print.

Secondary SourcesAlcubierre Moya, Beatriz. Ciudadanos del future;

una historia de las publicaciones para niños en el siglo XIX mexicano. México: El colegio de México/UAEM, 2010. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. durham: duke UP, 2009. Print.

Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments; Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2004. Print.

Faris, Wendy B. and Lois Parkinson Zamora. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. nashville: duke UP, 1995. Print.

Márquez, Gabriel García. “nobel Lecture: The Solitude of Latin America”. Nobelprize.org. nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 15 May 2014.

Trejo, Blanca Lydia. La literatura infantile en México, desde los aztecas hasta nuestros días. México, 1950. Print.


“America is a continent and not a country.” Mora, Nepantla 41

Mexican American writer Pat Mora has dedicated her career to creating poetry and prose that supports readers’ transnational and cosmopolitan identities. This article examines five of Mora’s picture books that are accessible in both Spanish and English and relevant to children in both México and the U.S. Each transcends political borders and amplifies the hypotheses that Gloria Anzaldúa introduces in Borderlands: The New Mestiza and Mora extends in Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle. Denise Dávila is Assistant Professor

in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at The University of

Georgia, Athens. Her research examines the inclusion of culturally diverse and

multilingual works of children’s literature in school, library, and community

programs for children and families.

by DENISE DÁVILA

Pat Mora:

Transcending the Continental Divide One Book at a Tim

e

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PAT MORA: TRAnScEndInG THE cOnTInEnTAL dIVIdE OnE BOOk AT A TIME

Open one of her picture books, and it becomes clear that the work of north American author Pat Mora is a testament to the theme of the 34th Annual IBBY congress, “Que todos signifique

todos / May Everyone Really Mean Everyone.” Mora’s internationally acclaimed children’s books call on readers to enact an inclusive perspec-tive toward continental identity. The five picture books by Mora that I examine in this article are available in both Spanish and English and explore subjects relevant to children across the north American conti-nent. Each of the texts transcends political borders and amplifies the hypotheses that chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa introduced in Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Borderlands) and Mora extends in Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle. To foreground my study, I will provide an overview of Mora’s and Anzaldúa’s perspectives to establish a contemporary context for revisiting their groundbreaking works. Then, I will apply a critical lens to discuss Mora’s picture books in relation to the construction of an inclusive pancontinental worldview.

Contemporary Context It is important to recognize that the transcontinental ties between México and the United States (U.S.) are inherently grounded in a common history, culture, and language. Today, Spanish is the second most commonly spoken world language in the U.S. and at least 63% percent of the 50.5 million U.S. Hispanics are of Mexican heritage (United States census Bureau). Only México—with a population of 112 million—has a larger population of Hispanics worldwide. nevertheless, while Mexican President Peña nieto and U.S. President Obama work to improve transcontinental relations, the U.S. federal government recently

English Title Spanish Title Awards

The Desert Is My Mother El Desierto es mi madre 1995 Skipping Stones Book AwardYum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico!: America’s Sproutings

Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico!: Brotes de las América

2008 Américas Award Commended Title 2008-2009 Texas Bluebonnet Award

A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inés

Una Biblioteca para Juana: El mundo de Sor Juana Inés

2003 Tomás Rivera Children's Book Award

2003 Américas Commended Title2004 Amelia Bloomer Project

Recommended ListDoña Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart

Doña Flor: Un Cuento de una mujer gigante con un grande corazón

2006 Pura Belpré Illustrator Medal Book 2006 Pura Belpré Author Honor Book

The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe

La Hermosa señora: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

2013 International Latino Book Award

Examples of Pat Mora’s Transnational Books

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authorized the increased militarization of border enforcement and the construction of 700 more miles of walls and fences to separate México from the U.S. (Wessler).

The re-establishment and building of new barriers to physically split the continent is a tangible reminder that, despite shared histo-ries, cultures, and languages, there are deep political borders that divide continental north Americans and fuel the U.S. rhetoric of exclu-sion and indifference that privileges White U.S. residents (national Hispanic Media coalition). For example, in 2012 the Tucson Unified School district of Arizona garnered national attention for its disregard of students’ Mexican heritage and subsequent termination of its k-12 Mexican American Studies program. More recently, the U.S. children’s publishing industry elicited scru-tiny for its privileging of White U.S. culture in the marketplace. Even though one in four U.S. public elementary school students identifies as Hispanic (Fry & Lopez), only 1.5% of the U.S. children’s books published in 2012 featured Hispanics/Latinos. By contrast, 93% of the books featured White characters (cooperative children’s Book center), which not only misrepresents the diversity of the U.S. population, but also preserves an ideology of White superiority that minimizes the significance of storytelling among other American continental groups.

Mora argues that in U.S. publishing, the “lack of diverse characters [skews] … kids’ view of our national reality and our national identity” and deprives all young readers of the opportunities to “know about other people, as well as other places and things” (qtd. in carrero). Her observation aligns with Rudine Sims Bishop’s funda-mental assertion that children who are exposed only to reflections of themselves in children’s literature “will grow up with an exaggerated view of their importance and value in the world—a dangerous ethnocentrism” (x). Such ethnocentrism undermines the United nations’ call to “ensure harmonious interaction among people and groups with plural, varied and dynamic cultural identities as well as their willingness to live together”.

In support of the U.n.’s goal of fostering cultural pluralism, there has never been a more urgent time to revisit Mora’s and Anzaldúa’s germinal books given the current disparity in U.S. children’s book publishing and the privileged status of some north Americans over others. Land in the Middle and Borderlands describe Mora’s and Anzaldúa’s respective experiences of being chicana women of mixed indigenous and Spanish

…only 1.5% of the U.S. children’s books published in 2012 featured Hispanics/Latinos. By contrast, 93% of the books featured White characters (Cooperative Children’s Book Center), which not only misrepresents the diversity of the U.S. population, but also preserves an ideology of White superiority that minimizes the significance of storytelling among other American continental groups.



heritage within a notional “land in the middle,” which the nahua people of pre-columbia Meso-america called nepantla. Re-inscribed by Mora and Anzaldúa, today nepantla embodies the conceptual interface between different cultures, languages, and spirituality as much as the terri-torial interface between nations’ borderlands. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez suggests,

In using the concept of nepantla, both Anzaldúa and Mora … claim a specific inter-cultural border identity, from which monological concepts of national culture and linear history are questioned. At a time when concepts of…heteroto-pias, thirdspaces, and inter-spaces are about to lose their critical edge because of sheer overuse, Mora’s and Anzaldúa’s use of nepantla marks both a convergence of chicana/o critical discourses with these debates and at the same time a specific contribution to them which is very much grounded in the situated knowledge of the Mexican American border space. (158)

In recognizing the border space as a source of cultural capital and abundance (Bourdieu; Yosso), the concept of nepantla offers a foundation for supporting an inclusive and flexible continental identity.

Background: Women of the NepantlaBorn and raised on the borderlands of the chihuahua desert in the southwest region of Texas, the young Anzaldúa (1942—2004) labored with her family as a migrant agricultural worker. despite the constraints of the traditional chicana gender expectations of the time, she was the first in her family to attend college and pursue advanced degrees. A self-proclaimed “border woman,” Anzaldúa wrote about the complexi-ties of her identity, gender, and sexual orientation and situated these complexities in the nepantla of her own three cultures (Indian, Spanish, White-American), dual races (Indian and Euro-pean), dual states (México and the U.S.), and her multiple languages (e.g. English, castilian

Spanish, north Mexican dialect, Texas-Mexican dialect, and nahuatl). In Borderlands, she prompts readers to not only conceive of the nepantla as a locus of privilege and power but also to enact an inclusive feminist worldview, which values the cross-pollination of race, culture, identity, and language among all people. Moreover, Anzaldúa proposes that in order to “survive the Borderlands” one must “live sin fronteras” [without borders] and “be a crossroads” (217). In other words, one must accommodate the various aspects of her heritage and identity and synthesize them into her own inclusive perspective.

Also a woman of the border, Mora (1942) was born and raised in the chihuahua desert in El Paso, Texas. All of her grandparents were from the same desert, except they lived on the south side of the Rio Grande. For Mora, “la frontera is a definite place, the U.S. /México border, that space separated by El Río Grande, those two tangled countries, the U.S. and México rubbing against one another” (qtd. in Oliver-Rotger). In Land in the Middle, as in her other works for adult audiences—such as House of Houses and My Own True Name—Mora gives testimony to her own mediation of cultural, linguistic, and gender expectations in the borderlands. She urges readers of Mexican heritage to seize “the richness of the cultures that are our inheritance: indigenous, Spanish, and their mix: México; and these United States: our mix” (41). Mora’s work for young readers likewise applies an inclusive feminist lens toward continental identity.

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Picture Books for a Continental AudienceJust as Anzaldúa regards “la madre naturaleza” [Mother nature] (18) as a source of strength and abundance, Mora finds the mountains, deserts, water, and the moon to be “deep, femi-nine symbols of strength and endurance” (qtd. in Pereira). She reflects in Land in the Middle that the desert terrain of the border space that she and her family inhabited “shaped us as geography always shapes its inhabitants…[and] persists in me, both inspiring and compelling me to sing about her and her people, their roots and blooms, and thorns” (13). Hence, it is not surprising that her first published work for children, the dual-language picture book The Desert Is My Mother/El Desierto es mi madre illustrated by Mexican artist daniel Lechón, was adapted from “Madre” [Mother], an affirming bilingual poem from her adult collection Chants. Of Mother desert, Mora tells her young picture book readers:

Le digo, dame de comer. [I say feed me.] Me sirve rojas tunas en nopal espi noso…[She serves red prickly pear on a spiked cactus]Le digo, cántame. [I say sing to me.]Me arrulla con sus canciones de viento…[She chants her windy songs]Le digo, enséñame. [I say teach me.]Y florece en el brillo del sol…She blooms in the sun’s glare]

Here, she indicates that the living desert of the nepantla is a tremendous source of physical and emotional nourishment. Even under severe conditions, including the wind and sun’s glare, the motherly border space provides food, joy, comfort, and knowledge. Her other poetry books for children—Listen to the Desert/Oye al desierto, Confetti: Poems for Children [confeti: Poemas para niños], and This Big Sky—similarly celebrate the landscape, wildlife, and people of the conti-nent and depict the harsh yet obliging terrain of both the physical and metaphorical nepantla.

Looking more broadly at the botanical riches of the continent, Mora affirms the intelligence,

ingenuity, and culture of pre-columbian Ameri-cans in her picture book collection of Haiku, Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico!: America’s Sprout-ings [Yum! ¡Mmm! ¡Qué Rico! Brotes de las Américas], illustrated by Mexican artist Rafael López, whose illustration from Mora’s Book Fiesta graces this issues cover. As suggested by her author’s note, America’s Sproutings recognizes the natural and cultural inheritance of the first peoples of the American continents and shows that culinary pleasures have no boundaries:

I love variety, don’t you? … I like diver-sity in people and poetry, too. I’ve so enjoyed writing my first book of haiku, those wonderful seventeen-syllable poems of Japanese origin. … Since I’ve also wanted to write a poetry collection about the native foods of the Americas, I combined these interests into this book of haiku about the foods that first sprouted here, before the Americas were divided into countries. … We do know that all these plants were grown and enjoyed by the peoples of the Americas long before christopher columbus or any other Europeans had ever tasted such wonderful foods.

In this note, Mora anticipates her young readers’ appreciation of diversity. She pushes against monoculturalism by describing her own syntheses of varying cultural interests.

Throughout the pages of America’s Sproutings, Mora’s haiku poems and informational sidebars assign social capital to pancontinental Americans

…she indicates that the living desert of the nepantla is a tremendous source of physical and emotional nourishment. Even under severe conditions, including the wind and sun’s glare, the motherly border space provides food, joy, comfort, and knowledge.



for cultivating some of the world’s most revered sources of sustenance. For example, in the text that accompanies her haiku about the Americas’ tomato: Round roly-poly / squirts seedy, juicy splatter. / Red bursts in your mouth (26), Mora tells readers that tomatoes “probably originated in Peru or México” and are “one of the world’s most prized foods” (25). Then she asks, “can you imagine pizza without tomato sauce or tacos without tomato salsa?” (25). Her rhetorical question assumes the tomato’s value to readers and her prose attributes the world’s affinity for tomato-based foods, including salsa, to pre-columbian Mexicans and/or Peruvians.

In addition, in the sidebar that accompanies Mora’s Haiku about vanilla positions indigenous Mexicans as accomplished scientists: “Totonac Indians of México discovered how to process vanilla pods and use vanilla as perfume, flavoring, medicine, and insect repellant.” Mora notes that the U.S. is “the world’s largest consumer of vanilla, mostly in foods and beverages” (27). In other words, the U.S. and international community depend on the innovation and ingenuity of indigenous Mexican culture. Her treatment of other foods in America’s Sproutings likewise offers inclusive counter-narratives to the political rhetoric that divides the continent and masks the rich heritage of the first Americans.

Women: Challenging the Divide By creating strong female characters who thrive in the nepantla as central subjects of three of her picture books—A Library for Juana, Doña Flor, and The Beau-tiful Lady—Mora provides a counter-narrative to north American White male privilege. Each book illustrates the benefits of gender, cultural, intellectual, and/or spiri-tual inclusivity.

To begin, in A Library for Juana, Mora tells the biographical story of a seventeenth century Mexican girl who lived during the time of Spain’s early colonization of the American continents including vast sections of the United States. A child prodigy, poet, intellectual, envi-ronmentalist, and advocate of women’s education, Sor [Sister] Juana Inés de la cruz was born in the village of San Miguel de nepantla. At an early age, Sor Juana knew “girls can do more than spin and sew” (11) and despite the fact that only men were allowed to attend universities, she begged her family, “please let me go to Mexico city to study” (13). Mora indicates that as a young woman, Sor

Juana joined the convent as a means to advance her intellectual curi-osity and to demonstrate that “we [girls] can study and prove all we know” to men (26). Her library became one of the largest collections in the continental Americas. Today, Sor Juana is revered as the first great Latin American poet and is called the “Phoenix of México.” Her story illustrates that Mexican women are intelligent, that gender norms need not diminish one’s desire to learn, and that an inclusive worldview accommodates an individual’s pursuit of knowledge.

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Just as in A Library for Juana, Mora offers a counter-narrative to conti-nental male privilege in Doña Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart [doña Flor: un cuento de una mujer gigante con un grande corazón], illustrated by Raul colón. She gives readers an alter-native to the north American tall tale of the large and brawny Paul Bunyan. In her tale, doña Flor is a powerful multilingual woman who uses her heart and intellect to solve problems rather than her muscle. I propose that Doña Flor is also a story about living sin fronteras [without borders] and drawing social and linguistic capital from the nepantla to support an inclusive worldview and identity.

As the tale opens, Mora describes Flor’s unique and unrestrained qualities: “Long ago, when Flor was a baby, her mother sang to her in a voice sweet as river music” (2). So nurturing were her mother’s songs that Flor was able to speak to butterflies and grasshoppers. “She spoke every language, even rattler,” Mora tells readers (3). As an adult, Flor had a presence so soothing that she could give the wind “a big hug to quiet him down” (14). More than anything, “Flor wanted everyone to feel at home in her house: “‘Mi casa es su casa,’ she said to the people, animals, and plants, so they knew they were always welcome” (6). Over time, Flor earned the respect of her neighbors and the villagers began to call her doña Flor. However, Flor also knew how it feels to be ridiculed. When Flor was a girl, “some children laughed at her because she was different” (3). The children taunted, “¡Mira! Look! Big Foot!” whenever Flor walked through the pueblo, and they whispered, “Flor talks funny,” whenever Flor spoke in a different language (3). In other words, they “talked bad” about Flor’s multilingualism. As Anzaldúa puts it, when people “talk bad” about another person’s languages it is particularly hurtful because one’s linguistic identity is “twin skin” to one’s ethnic identity (81). Flor’s linguistic identity reflects her identification with varying groups in her community. The children’s taunts are akin to the insults fearful people wield toward persons who do not share the same linguistic, racial, cultural, and/or social identities.

When the villagers grew frightened by the sound of a puma’s roar, only doña Flor knew how to alleviate their anxiety. She used her social and linguistic capital to enter the animal kingdom and to consult with different species about the puma’s whereabouts. concerned for Flor, the villagers gathered their courage to leave the pueblo, calling, “doña Flor, ¿dónde estás? Where are you? … Even though they were frightened, they had all come, holding hands” (27). In the end, while it was Flor’s intellect, multilingualism, and membership within varying groups that resolved the problem, the villagers learned that they were capable of crossing the physical and emotional boundaries of their comfort zone and the puma recognized that he could accept Flor’s friendship rather than reject it. In short, the very concept of Mora’s bilingual tall tale,



in which a powerful and benevolent multilingual woman thrives in the nepantla, is a testament to living without borders and embracing an inclu-sive worldview, reinforcing the strengths of a diverse continental community.

Patroness of the Americas This last section explores one of Mora’s most recent publications The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe [La Hermosa señora: nuestra Señora de Guadalupe], which includes the legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe (OLG), who is other-wise known as the inclusive Patroness or Queen of the American continents. To appreciate Mora’s storytelling in The Beautiful Lady, it is important to have an understanding of the historical signifi-cance of OLG in north America.

In brief, nearly 500 years ago, Spain invaded and conquered much of the Americas. With an objective to indoctrinate and thereby control the indigenous peoples of new Spain (modern day México and most of the U.S.), Spanish mission-aries imported apparition stories of the Virgin Mary and other castilian-catholic saints. Then they destroyed local shrines dedicated to Indian deities and replaced them with chapels and churches honoring catholic saints (Badillo; Poole). The historic Marian legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe correspondingly emerged. In the legend, OLG appeared to a poor Indian man name Juan diego in 1531. She asked Juan diego to convince the Bishop to build her a church at Tepeyac, the site of the pre-columbian shrine dedicated to Tonantzin, whom the nahua people honored as the Mother of the Gods (Anzaldúa; Badillo; Poole). Miraculously, OLG left her image on Juan diego’s tilma [cloak]. Today, her iconic image hangs in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe atop the former shrine of Tonantzin near México city.

Instead of abandoning their spiritual heritage, many Indians of México accommodated the reverence of OLG as a secret means of resisting the church and honoring Tonantzin (Badillo). Accepted as Mary, the catholic Mother of God as well as Tonantzin, the nahua Mother of the Gods, OLG emerged from the nepantla. She came to represent the mixed, mestiza identity

of Mexico’s people (Anzaldúa). What’s more, OLG evolved into a national and political figure whose image adorned the revolutionary banners of Mexicans in their bid for Independence from Spain in 1810, and the call for Revolution in 1910. In the U.S., civil rights activist and labor leader, césar chávez carried a banner of OLG while calling for the social justice, human rights, and fair labor practices and wages for agriculture workers. In the words of Anzaldúa, Our Lady of Guadalupe is:

A synthesis of the old world and the new, of the religion and culture of the two races in our psyche, the conquerors and the conquered. She is the symbol of … ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity that chicanos/Mexicanos, people of mixed race, people who have Indian blood, people who cross cultures, by necessity possess. (53 - 54)

Today, the image of OLG can be found across the continent. She adorns private and public spaces in México and the U.S. and is featured in children’s books. Both the illustrations of Anzaldúa’s picture book Friends from the Other Side and Mora’s picture book Our Beautiful Lady show OLG’s presence in contemporary chicanas’

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homes. Similarly, carmen Lomas Garza features OLG in her picture book memoirs In My Family and Family Pictures. Other children’s works such as Gary Soto’s Chato’s Kitchen and Chato and the Party Animals, illustrated by Susan Guevara, reference the famous public murals of OLG in East Los Angeles, cA. The inclusion of OLG’s image in contemporary U.S. picture books reflects her significance to millions of continental Americans.

Having established a context for the discus-sion, the next few paragraphs offer an analysis of The Beautiful Lady, one of the few U.S. children’s books to situate the apparition story of OLG within the structure of a contemporary realistic story. While other U.S. publications—such as Bernier-Grand’s Our Lady of Guadalupe or de Paola’s The Lady of Guadalupe—offer a re-telling of an “old Mexican legend,” Mora opens her story on the Feast day of Our Lady of Guada-lupe (december 12). She invites readers into Grandma Lupita’s warm, modern-day kitchen where granddaughter Rose and friend Terry take a break from folding bright red paper roses. The girls stop to admire a statue of OLG, which Grandma has displayed prominently in her living room. curious Terry asks, “Who’s that pretty lady?” (3). Then Rose prompts her grandmother to tell the legend of OLG just as she does every year.

Grandma begins her account just as Juan diego dons his tilma and walks toward Tepeyac Hill on a cold december day. She describes how la hermosa Señora [the beautiful Lady] asked Juan diego to visit the bishop and to request the construction of a church atop Tepeyac Hill to honor the Lady. Grandma explains that in the cold of winter, la Señora promised that Juan diego would find beautiful roses on the hill to take to the bishop as proof of the Lady’s existence. She tells Rose and Terry that at the bishop’s palace, “the roses tumbled out, their sweet scent floated around the room … [Then,] everyone pointed at Juan diego’s tilma … There on his cloak was the image of la hermosa Señora!” (24) Grandma concludes that Juan diego admired the image of la Señora and “carefully touched her beautiful brown face” (24).

Afterwards, Mora returns readers to the kitchen where Grandma’s special rose-shaped cookies await for Rose and Terry. In the final scene Rose realizes that Grandma is named after Guadalupe: “Your name is Lupita, so this is your special day, too, right?” (28) Mora leaves it to reader to recognize that Rose’s name is connected with the Lady, too.

In terms of analysis, it is worth noting that Mora chooses to conclude Grandma’s retelling of the legend by having Juan diego touch OLG’s brown face. Her decision accommodates readers who, like Anzalúda, recognize Guadalupe as, “the symbol of the mestizo true to his or her Indian values,” such as the chicana culture, which “identifies with the mother (Indian) rather than with the father (Spanish)” (52). Mora explains, “At different times and in different countries, México and the U.S., Juan diego and Grandma Lupita, both love nuestra Señora, and each feels an irresistible urge to touch her image as readers might feel when they see a photo of their own mother.” (Personal Interview).

Staying with Juan’s and Grandma Lupita’s intimate experiences avoids the pattern of other picture books about the legend of OLG, such as those written by córdova and Serrano, which commonly end with the construction of a cath-olic church atop Tepeyac Hill. Mora’s picture book validates that OLG is important to the contemporary identity, culture, and spirituality

…Mora’s decision to include Terry in the story helps to normalize the presence of OLG’s statue in Grandma Lupita’s home and permits Rose to explain that sharing the legend of OLG is an important custom in her family. Terry’s interest in OLG not only shows the innocence of children as transcontinental actors, it also reinforces that Rose’s heritage and identity are worth knowing.



of many north Americans. In the same way that Anzaldúa’s Borderlands first legitimized for many chicanas that their experiences are “worth being told and written about”, The Beautiful Lady legiti-mizes for children of Mexican heritage that their experiences are worth of being discussed and recorded in books, too (232).

Furthermore, Mora’s decision to include Terry in the story helps to normalize the presence of OLG’s statue in Grandma Lupita’s home and permits Rose to explain that sharing the legend of OLG is an important custom in her family. Terry’s interest in OLG not only shows the inno-cence of children as transcontinental actors, it also reinforces that Rose’s heritage and identity are worth knowing. Through Terry, Mora offers an invitation to young readers to ask questions and learn about their peers’ cultural worldviews and perspectives, which may differ from their own. Terry’s actions reflect an inclusive perspec-tive that creates space for flexibility and plurality in one’s worldview.

Reaching a Continental AudienceMora’s validation of OLG’s role in the history and culture of the continent certainly was not missed by the television producers of “directo USA: Latino en América” [direct USA: Latino in America]. They invited Mora to speak with Spanish language viewers across north America about her approach to making the legend of Juan diego and OLG accessible to young readers of different backgrounds. during the same segment, commentator Juan carlos López highlighted the significance of OLG to millions of continental Americans. The news story elevated The Beautiful Lady as an important work of continental litera-ture for children.

collectively, Mora’s picture books that I have described in this article, The Desert Is My Mother; Americas’ Sproutings; A Library for Juana; Doña Flor; and The Beautiful Lady, transcend physical, cultural, linguistic, spiritual, and gendered divi-sions to support the inclusive continental iden-tities of today’s youth. They demonstrate the value in conceiving of a continental nepantla that feeds (literally and figuratively) north Ameri-cans, challenges social norms, and cultivates an

inclusive worldview that preserves natural and wildlife communities of the Americas, which both Mora and Anzaldúa cherish.

However, the stark reality remains that in U.S. publishing, the visibility of acclaimed Latino children’s literature is limited in the mainstream marketplace (diaz). Thus, it is crucial to raise public awareness about conti-nental children’s literature like cnn en Español did for The Beautiful Lady. After all, books have the capacity to open “the locked places” and teach young people “first how to survive and then how to soar” (Anzaldúa 18). The key is to let young readers know that there are books for them, all of which can help to facilitate locally the U.n.’s global objective of cultivating pluralism among people with varied and dynamic identities. Mora supports the U.n.’s call for harmony through her books and advocacy of día, “a daily commit-ment to link all children to books, languages and cultures, day by day, día por día” (Mora, “What is dia?”).

Just as neither Mora nor Anzaldúa recognized herself in the U.S. children’s books that were available to them sixty years ago, today’s youth could be faced with similar circumstances. north American children who have diverse identities and/or who may be navigating the nepantla of varying cultures and languages may continue to have fewer options for seeing themselves in children’s books than monolingual White U.S. residents. congruently, the literacies needed for survival and communication are just as signifi-cant for these children as they are for children who are members of dominant cultural groups (Rodriguez). Hence, the work of authors who provide a voice for underrepresented youth through literature is crucial.

consider, for example, Mora’s account of a teacher who had shared Doña Flor with her middle-grade English language learners: “[She] stood up at a presentation I was giving and, hugging the book, said, “We love doña Flor because she’s so big and we feel so small” (Larson 24). While the children might not feel seen, doña Flor is a powerful, boundless, multilingual woman who is not only seen, but flourishes from the nepantla. Like a curandera [natural healer],

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continental stories can point young readers toward seeing the nepantla as an abundant source of sustenance in developing an inclusive world-view in which “todos signifique todos".

Works Cited

Children’s BooksAnzaldúa, Gloria. Friends from the Other Side.

San Francisco, cA: children’s Book Press, 1993. Print.

—. Prietita and the Ghost Woman /Prietita y la llorona. San Francisco: children’s Book Press, 1997. Print.

Bernier-Grand, carmen. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Seattle: Amazon Publishing, 2012. Print.

córdova, Amy. Talking Eagle and the Beautiful Roses. Barington: Steiner, 2010. Print.

Garza, carmen. Family Pictures. San Francisco: children’s Book Press, 1991. Print.

—. In My Family. San Francisco: children’s Book Press, 1996. Print.

Mora, Pat. The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guada-lupe [La Hermosa señora: nuestra Señora de Guadalupe]. Illus. Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. new York: knopf, 2012. Print.

—. The Big Sky. Illus. Steve Jenkins. new York: Scholastic, 1998. Print.

—. Confetti: Poems for Children. [confeti: poemas para niños]. Illus. Enrique O. Sanchez. new York: Lee & Low, 1996. Print.

—. The Desert Is My Mother/El desierto es mi madre. Illus. daniel Lechon. Houston: Pinata Books, 1994. Print.

Like a curandera [natural healer], continental stories can point young readers toward seeing the nepantla as an abundant source of sustenance in developing an inclusive worldview in which “todos signifique todos”.

—. Doña Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart [doña Flor: un cuento de una mujer gigante con un grande corazón]. Illus. Raul colón. new York: knopf, 2006. Print.

—. A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Inés. Illus. Beatriz Vidal. new York, nY: knopf, 2002. Print.

—. Listen to the Desert: Oye al Desierto. Illus. Francisco X. Mora. new York: clarion, 1994. Print.

—. Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué rico!: America’s Sprout-ings [Yum! ¡Mmm! ¡Qué Rico! Brotes de las Américas]. Illus. Rafael Lopez. new York: Lee & Low, 2007. Print.

Paola, Tomie de. The Lady of Guadalupe. new York, nY: Holiday House, 1980. Print.

Serrano, Francisco. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Ontario: Groundwood, 1998. Print.

Soto, Gary. Chato and the Party Animals. new York: Putnam, 2002. Print.

—. Chato’s Kitchen. new York: Putnam, 1995. Print.

Secondary SourcesAnzalda, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The

New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Print.

Badillo, david. Latinos and the New Immigrant Church. Washington d.c.: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Print.

Bishop, Rudine Sims. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6.3 (1990): ix-xi. Print.

Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of capital.” Hand-book of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John Richardson. new York: Greenwood, 1986. 241-258. Print.

carrero, Jacquellana. “Authors Work to Reflect Latino culture in children’s Books.” nBcLa-tino.com, 7, dec. 2012. Web. 5 May 2014.

diaz, Shelley. “Librarians Sound Off: not a Lack of Latino Lit for kids, but a Lack of Aware-ness.” School Library Journal. School Library Journal, 22 Jan. 2013. Web. 5 May 2014.



Fry, Richard and Mark Hugo Lopez. “now Largest Minority Group on Four-Year college campuses: Hispanic Student Enrollments Reach new Highs in 2011.”Pew Research Centre: Hispanic Trends Projects. Pew Hispanic centre, 20 Aug. 2012. Web. 5 May 2014.

Horning, kathleen, Merri Lindgren, and Megan Schliesman. “A Few Observations on Publishing in 2012.” Cooperative Children’s Book Center. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2013. Web. 5 May 2014.

Larson, Jeanette. “Talking with Pat Mora.” Book Links (January, 2011): 23-26. Print.

Mora, Pat. House of Houses. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1997. Print. —. Interview by Juan carlos López. Directo USA: Latino en América.

cnn en Español. Los Angeles, 12, dec. 2012. TV.—. Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle. Albuquerque: U of new

Mexico P, 1993. Print.—. Personal interview. 1 Sept. 2012.—. “What is dia?” PatMora.Com. 2013. Web. 5 May 2014.national Hispanic Media coalition. American Hate Radio: How A

Powerful Outlet For Democratic Discourse Has Deteriorated Into Hate, Racism And Extremism. Washington, dc: national Hispanic Media coalition. 2012. Print.

Oliver-Rotger, Maria Antónia. “An Interview with Pat Mora”, VG: Voices from the Gaps., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. May/June, 1999. Web. 5 May 2014.

Pereira, Aline. “Interview with Pat Mora,” Papertigers.Org. April, 2006. Web. 5 May 2014.

Pisarz-Ramirez, Gabriele. “From nepantla to Amerindia: Transnation-ality in Mexican American Literature and Art.” Iberoamericana 7.25 (2007)” 155-172. Print.

Poole, Stafford. Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531 – 1797. Tucson: U of Arizona P. 1995. Print.

Pritchard, T. Gail, and Patrick W. Pritchard. “An Interview with Pat Mora: The Reader and Writer.” Journal of Children’s Literature 32.2 (2006): 23-26. Print.

Rodríguez, R. Joseph. “‘Muy listo y bien educado’: Literacies from Home into the classroom.” Impressions, Ruminations, Treatises. Andover: Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, 2014. 80-88. Print.

United nations. Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Article 2. UnEScO: 2 nov. 2001. Web. 5 May 2014.

United States census Bureau. “The Hispanic Population: 2010.” Wash-ington d.c.: US department of commerce. May 2011. PdF.

Wessler, Fred. “Senate Passes Border Militarization Amendment with Bipartisan Support.” colorlines.com. 25 Jun. 2013. Web.

Yosso, Tara. “Whose culture has capital? A critical Race Theory discussion of community cultural Wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education 8.1 (2005): 69-91. Print.


Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

(Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Author’s note)

Francisco Hinojosa is one of the most popular authors of children’s fiction in México. The inclusion of Hinojosa’s narratives within México’s national literacy education programs is closely related to a central theme that appears repeatedly throughout his work; in many of Hinojosa’s stories, the characters and narrative sequences center upon transformation, from an anomalous condition to a state of normality, and becoming a learning model for young readers.

Learning in Francisco Hinojosa’s Children’s Fiction

by MóNICA BERNAL BEjARLE

A full-time professor at the University of Morelos in Cuernavaca, México,

Monica Bernal lectures on Spanish literature and poetry and has published

articles on the relationship between literature and education, and more

recently Lengua española (México: Macmillan-Castillo, 2012).


LEARnInG In FRAncIScO HInOJOSA’S cHILdREn’S FIcTIOn

The old discussion regarding the social implications of children’s literature and its literary quality is still alive. Many would argue that in societies around the world, children first encounter

literature at school. The links between literature and education remain complex, inviting traditional postulates of classic poetics to inter-mingle with more recent socio-educative strategies. The construction

of a literary canon of books specific to readers’ communities vindicates manifold attitudes and positions towards this initial literary event; the literary culture of the education system selects and promotes access to literature, which in turn determines power relations, specifically disciplinary power, that power “que tiene como función principal ‘enderezar conductas’” [which has as a main function ‘to rectify conduct’] (Foucault 199).

For decades México’s educational administration has promoted didactic content through textbooks and education programs, as well as its distribution of other books in public schools. In practical terms, many geographic and sociocultural regions are fraught with low reading levels and analphabetism, thus children’s literature reception warrants state policy. México is not a country of readers despite the fact that there are libraries in most schools. However, since post-revolutionary times, governments and those responsible for México’s education have been involved in the formation of a children’s literary canon, which has not always been linked to the necessities of the publishing market but does take into account the circumstances of reception. As colomer suggests, the messages transmitted through children’s literature are of prime importance to the dynamics of power relations, and the construction and selection of children’s literature has not only been one of the key concerns for adults that educate—parents and teachers, for example—or for specific policies, but also the network of mediations between instruction and delight, between literary and simply popular, that comprise works and projects by Mexican writers. One of these media-tions will be reviewed here.

The children’s narratives of Mexican writer Francisco Hinojosa—born in México city in 1954—represents a fundamental reference for assembling the literary collections published by México’s cultural and educational institutions.1 Over the span of thirty years, Hinojosa has published more than twenty books of children’s literature, among them some of the most popular fictions of the genre in México, such as La Peor señora del mundo [The World’s Worst Lady], from 1992. Since the 1980s, his novels and children’s stories have belonged in the literary selection promoted by the policies of reading encouragement launched by Mexican educational and cultural institutions.

As one of the most famous children’s authors in México and Latin America, the inclusion of Hinjosa’s works in the national reading curric-ulum has also provided him with institutional support. The Fondo de

The links between literature and education remain complex, inviting traditional postulates of classic poetics to intermingle

with more recent socio-educative strategies.

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cultura Económica (FcE) for example has published nine of his chil-dren’s books, and the Secretaría de Educación Pública [Secretariat of Public Education] includes his works among the complementary read-ings to textbooks, the literary stock known as Los Libros del rincón [The Books of the corner], which is formed by a wide and diverse selection of books that are delivered to libraries in public schools at pre-school, elementary, and junior high levels. Likewise, the consejo nacional para la cultura y las Artes [national council for culture and Arts] (cOnAcULTA) often provides reading promoters and cultural media-tors with Hinojosa’s books by means of federal programs such as the Programa nacional de Salas de Lectura [national Program for Reading Rooms].

considering the ways in which Hinojosa’s children’s literature is utilized by the cultural and educational institutions of México makes it evident that the practices of mediation in and around his children’s books are disciplinary practices; the literary success of Hinojosa inside the institutional realm merits a reading of his literature that pays special attention to the peculiarities of his oeuvre, which is populated by anomalous characters and apparently absurd situations that do not seem to pursue pedagogic but rather ludic objectives. Inside the current panorama of Mexico’s children’s literature, Hinojosa’s works are consid-ered to be “classic” literature that perpetuates one of the most common precepts in the history of Western poetics, the Horatian prodesse et delec-tare, “to teach delight.” The narratives of Hinojosa are thought to repre-sent a paradigm among the selections of “good children’s books.”

Hinojosa’s children’s fiction belongs to an old tradition that revises one of the foundational ideas of literary pragmatism; there is a virtual reader, in this case the child, who is the main target of the author and the disciplinary power. In the history of literary ideas—which might be exemplified by the duality between teaching and delighting proposed by Horace in Epistle to the Pisones, and taken seriously by the poetics of both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment—it is an old technique. The pioneers within the genre of children’s literature, the enlightened fable tellers, whose pedagogic quest is undeniable, adhered to this principle. Both La Fontaine in France and Iriarte y Samaniego in the Hispanic context recreated the fable’s classic universe premised on confidence in the unlimited progress of human beings through education.

The inclusion of an animal universe in Enlightenment literature had as a main purpose the teaching of ethics, and Hinojosa’s fictions pursue this same goal, following the idea, “la cual observa la diversión como una estrategia para dirigirse a éste aunque el objetivo fundamental siga siendo eminentemente didáctico” [which conceives fun as a strategy to approach the child, even though the fundamental objective is still mainly didactic] (Alcubierre 29). In the play El Cocodrilo no sirve, es dragón [The crocodile doesn’t Work, It Is a dragon] (2004), two alle-gories about appearances that reflect on fashion (no one wants to be left behind changes) and disguise (it is impossible to know the real nature of people) are outlined. As happens in classic texts of the enlightened fable,



El Cocodrilo is a lesson on anomalous behavior and its consequences on life within community. Although the moral is not made explicit, the psychological characterization of animals that identify themselves with social models intervenes through the group of gossiping women, the inno-vative merchant woman, the public servants, and the military. The book follows gender conven-tions in order to allow the link between imagina-tion and pedagogic humor.

In a city inhabited by animals imbued with urban roles, three characters—a She-camel, a doe and a She-Mouse—get together in a pizzeria to discuss “the last news”—that is, to gossip. They have recently found out that Mrs. Ewe paints her body with capricious motifs, and that she has also started to do the same to some of the famous and admired citizens of the town, first with extrav-agant colors, and later with parts from other animals. Envied and renowned characters, such as the bachelor Gorilla, have let themselves be painted “a watermelon color with peppermint’s

moles and pineapple” by Mrs. Ewe, and obtain the social distinction of success because of it. In the beginning, the transformation of this new fashion is attacked, even by Mr. Turtle, the Governor, who will later on participate in this fashion trend. The narration becomes a succes-sion of dialogues on the varied metamorphoses that, because of the codes of fashion, the citizens suffer. They all return, again by the influence of imitation imposed by the models of Mrs. Ewe, to their original condition, while the fiercest enemy of this fashion, Mr. Turtle, abandons the city to defend his own transformation.

As we can see, a moral allegory manifests clearly in El Cocodrilo; however, ethical induc-tions of this kind—although still present—are not as evident in Hinojosa’s best-known fictions. I will expand by considering three of his works from the early 1990s, which follow the same narrative scheme, and one of his recent novels, in which the normative proposal for the reading child is also explicit. I choose these examples of his literary production and do not include other narratives due to the structural similarities between the earlier texts, and that the example of the latter confirms both its pedagogic intention and its normative tendency. nevertheless, this approach does not exclude other fictions by the author; even some of their titles—like Manual para corregir niños malcriados [Manual to correct Spoiled children], published in 2012—reveal

Despite the author’s insistence that his purpose is not didactic, but

ludic, most of Hinojosa’s fictions are moralizing allegories that

populate the fictional geography—cities, schools, and public spaces—with aggressive, misbehaved and

disobedient beings, for whom a fortunate turn acts to redirects

them to normal and accepted forms of behavior.

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their didactic content. The suggested titles for my reading, in chronological order, are: Aníbal y Melquiades [Anibal and Melquiades] (1991), the most famous and celebrated of Hinojosa’s works, La Peor señora del mundo [The World’s Worst Lady] (1992), and Amadís de anís… Amadís de codorniz [Anise Amadis… Amadis Quail] (1993). I finish with El Castigo de Lucas [Lucas’s Punishment], from 2012.

despite the author’s insistence that his purpose is not didactic, but ludic (Montaño Garfias), most of Hinojosa’s fictions are moralizing allego-ries that populate the fictional geography—cities, schools, and public spaces—with aggressive, misbehaved and disobedient beings, for whom a fortunate turn acts to redirects them to normal and accepted forms of behavior. In these fictions, the main characters are hyperbolic constructions, and the nature of the change that reestablishes equilibrium in the world comes from magic and wit. Hyperbole works as an artifice of humor, because the exaggerated tone in which the char-acters are described gestures towards the neces-sity of harmonization. And once the equilibrium has been reestablished, when chaos gets tidied up, the story ends.

Aníbal y Melquiades [Anibal and Melquiades] is a story that rebuilds the old fable of intelligence’s

superiority against force, in which the harmful and the aggressive are tamed by means of magic and wit. It is the story of two chilren—class-mates—whose families, behavior, and appear-ance antagonize. Melquiades’ family represents force and intransigence; his father is a wrestling champion, and his mother and sister are well known for their excessive force. Melquiades is “el niño más fuerte y temido de la escuela. Podía cargar el escritorio de la maestra con todo y maestra arriba, era capaz de pelear contra dos de tercero, mataba los alacranes con la mano y podía comerse una lata completa de chiles” [the stron-gest and most feared boy in the school. He could lift the teacher’s desk, he was capable of fighting with two boys from third grade, he would kill two scorpions with his hand and he could eat a complete can of chili]2. Anibal’s family is weak; his father is a tiny jockey, his mother weeps over everything, and his little sister has to be tied to the swing because she is afraid of motion. Anibal “Era el niño más débil y flacucho de la escuela. chupaba los dulces porque no tenía fuerza para morderlos, le costaba trabajo partir un carton-cillo en dos, daba las gracias cuando alguien le robaba su comida del recreo y lloraba cuando sus compañeros le decían de broma ‘Aníbal caníbal’. Muchas veces, su mamá tenía que cargarle la mochila porque él se cansaba antes de llegar a la escuela” [Was the weakest and skinniest boy in the school. He sucked the candies because he was not strong enough to chew them, he could hardly split in to a piece of cardboard, he would thank when his lunch was stolen in the play-ground and he would cry when his mates called him ‘Anibal cannibal’. His mom would often carry his backpack because he was tired before they reached school.] The relationship dynamic between Melquiades and Anibal, and also between Melquiades and his other classmates, is that of dominator and dominated until a school competition, a circus tournament, creates the opportunity for things to change.

The best friend of Anibal’s father is a famous magician, Merlin-lin. The boy asks for his help, and Merlin-lin makes Anibal his apprentice. Thanks to the guidance provided by his mentor, Anibal finds the secret to being a real magician.



The tournament begins; Melquiades displays his strength and his dominion with a tiger cub he has tamed. However, to the bewilderment of the public, Anibal beats Melquiades with magic. Anibal transforms Melquiades into an obedient child and Anibal, formerly the weaker of the two, defeats his strongest opponent. Melquiades’s family has hope that their son’s real personality will be returned, but also has their wills modified by Anibal’s magic, up to the point that they insist that “que su hijo siga siendo un niño bueno” [the child will still be a good boy]. In the end, the classroom has become normal and everyone lives together in peace.

In La Peor señora del mundo [The World’s Worst Lady], Hinojosa’s best children’s work and an allegory on abuse, a community is held pris-oner by one infamous woman’s tyrannical actions. When she beats and tortures her children, this fat ugly woman “les echaba jugo de limón en los ojos lo mismo si hacían travesuras que si le ayudaban a barrer la cocina o a lavar los platos de la comida” [would pour lemon juice in their eyes whether they misbehaved or helped her to sweep the kitchen and wash the dishes]. She scratches, punches and humiliates her neighbors and the other inhabitants of the city if they cross her path. Even animals and vermin run from her: “era una señora mala, terrible, espantosa, malvadísima. La peor de las peores señoras del mundo. La más malvada de las malvadas” [She was a bad lady, terrible, hideous, malignant; the worst of the worse ladies in the world. The most evil of all evil].

Her family and the other inhabitants of the town decide to take action against her and abandon the city; by leaving her to live alone, they plan to rob her of the amusement and delight she takes in their torment. But she finds a way around their plan and she sends a note with a messenger dove, which says: “Quiero que me perdonen. He recapacitado y creo que yo era una mala persona. Ya no volveré a ser como era antes. Para que me lo crean, me voy a dejar pisar y rasguñar por todos los que quieran hacerlo” [I want you to forgive me. I have reconsidered and I think I was a bad person. I will no longer be as I was before. Just so you believe me, I’ll let all who wish to do so stomp and scratch me]. All of the citi-zens believe her, and they go back to the city where she allows them—as promised—to treat her badly, but just a few days later, without the people noticing, she builds a huge wall around the city that obstructs any exit. From that moment on, her cruelty increases. All the citizens gather again and, led by the joint suggestion of a child and the town’s oldest man, decide to deceive her and convince her that they enjoy the way that she mistreats them. Every time the world’s worst lady attacks someone, the affected person pretends to enjoy the abuse, and even begs for more. The world’s worst lady inverts her own scheme and, thinking that she is doing harm, begins to respect and treat the town’s people well, destroying her own wall when the town’s oldest man remarks on the community’s happiness at having it. The story ends favorably: “desde entonces todos vivieron felices, pues la peor señora del mundo seguía haciendo las cosas malas más buenas del mundo … mientras el pueblo se divertía a sus anchas con sus engaños” [since then everyone in town

52.3 – 2014 | 19IBBY.ORG


lived happily, because the world’s worst lady kept doing the worst best things in the world … while the entire town was having great fun with their cheating].

Amadís de anís … Amadís de codorniz [Anise Amadis … Amadis Quail] is an allegory on gluttony. For Amadis, the most sweet-toothed boy of all, “no había dulce, choco-late, chicloso, malvavisco, paleta, mazapán, pirulí, helado, pastel o frasco de mermelada que paseara sus gratos aromas ante su nariz sin que a él le entraran unas ganas feroces de devorarlo” [there was no sweet, chocolate, chewing gum, bonbon, lollipop, marzipan, candy pop, ice cream, cake or marmalade jar, from which pleasant aromas would not drive him crazy with eagerness to devour them]. Amadis is a child whose only interest in life is to eat every kind of candy until one day he wakes-up transformed into a child made out of candy. The metamorphosis is invisible to the eyes of others, but not to their sense of smell; in front of a mirror, Amadis still appears to be the same child, but he smells so candied that everyone starts noticing his sweet aromas. His voracity for sweets drives him to consume his own body. A classmate discovers his secret, so from time to time he must allow her to snack on a piece of him—a finger, some-times an ear, or a piece of cheek—in order to avoid being given away.

The modification of Amadis’ body changes his appetite as well, and he begins to crave the savory food that he previously hated. But his candied smell is still very intense, and soon the schoolboys discover the source of the delicious candy smell and jump all over Amadis to devour him. They leave him “sin brazos, piernas, ombligo, pelo, dientes, nariz, boca y ojos” [without arms, legs, a bellybutton, hair, teeth, a nose, mouth and eyes]. Even the teacher participates. Amadis’ body regenerates, but now he only desires savory food, and one day wakes-up transformed into a savory child: “sus manos olían a milanesa y su pelo le supo a paella. Los brazos eran de camarón, la boca de jitomate, la lengua de hígado ence-bollado y la nariz de queso añejo. Sus dedos eran tentáculos de pulpo” [his hands smelled like a breaded steak, his hair like paella. His arms were shrimps, his mouth a tomato, his tongue was made of liver with onions and his nose made with old cheese. His fingers were octopus’ tentacles]. Just as he used to smell like candy, his body now smells like savory food. Although Amadis wants to devour desserts again, he has learned his lesson and corrects his behavior, his deadly sin, finding that “la única manera de solucionar el problema era comer como todo el mundo: un poco de comida salada y otro poco de postre. Sólo así podría curarse de esa rara enfermedad” [the only way to solve the problem was to eat like everybody else: a little bit of savory food and other bit of dessert. That was the only way to cure the strange malady]. However, the children at school have found out Amadis’ secret of how to turn into a candied or savory kid and all begin to transform themselves and start to devour each other.



These three stories follow a narrative scheme of mistake-correction and go from the absurd to the judicious through various transformative conditions, such as magic, deceit, and cruelty. Thus, each of the three stories possesses an eminently didactic character that coordinates ludic structures through hyperbolic humor, and that proposes compensatory solutions to the excesses of the abnormal, of the extraordinary, and of the undisciplined. In this sense, Francisco Hinojosa’s literature educates readers, recreating a communal space in which one who finds them-selves outside of the norm and loses his or her place within the community can regain it.

In the first two narratives something external to the character corrects them; in Melquiades’ case the corrective force is magic, and in the case of the world’s worst lady it is the trickery of an organized society. In Amadis, the boy comes to comprehend the consequences of his actions through his own experience with cruelty. In all three cases the characters begin situated outside of the accepted model, but are corrected in the end. The moment they regularize their behavior, the world regains its equilibrium—its order—and they live happy forever and ever.

The short novel El Castigo de Lucas [Lucas’ Punishment] argues from the beginning that each person has the responsibility to rectify his or her own behavior. Lucas is an eleven-year-old boy who fails to pass the school year, and whose parents punish him by restricting his use of technology. Until Lucas improves his grades, he cannot not watch television or use his computer, not in his house or anywhere else. Lucas’ situ-ation worsens over the summer holidays as this punishment threatens his contact with celia, his best friend, a girl from another town that he has met on online. In his last message to celia, Lucas asks for her address, and from that moment the plot of the novel develops an emotive epistolary exchange between the two children. Throughout the process Lucas learns not only to value time and intimacy, but also learns an important lesson on the value of the word, which improves his relationship with literacy and also his attitude towards school. El Castigo de Lucas is a fiction on interior growth and learning. Lucas becomes a model for the transformative power of the word. As Teresa colomer points out, “Los niños que viven en los márgenes del sistema social necesitan la palabra y las historias para poder sobrevivir.

Y los niños que viven instalados en la mayor pasividad consumista necesitan de la palabra y las historias para poder rescatarse” [The children

Forming a children’s literary canon and an accompanying

national reading curriculum that is comprised of texts that bring updated precepts of traditional

poetics, and that promotes literary education and reading

in a country that suffers from educational deprivation, violence, and corrupted political and social structures is an attempt to control

the uncontrollable and to discipline that which cannot be disciplined.

52.3 – 2014 | 21IBBY.ORG


who live in the margins of the social system need the word and the stories to survive. And the chil-dren who live installed in the greatest consum-erist passivity need the word and the stories to redeem themselves] (193).

Forming a children’s literary canon and an accompanying national reading curriculum that is comprised of texts that bring updated precepts of traditional poetics, and that promotes literary education and reading in a country that suffers from educational deprivation, violence, and corrupted political and social structures is an attempt to control the uncontrollable and to discipline that which cannot be disciplined. It is the right thing to do. Within the complex rela-tionship between literature and education exists a confluent space of stylistic, theoretical, peda-gogic and political traditions in which it is funda-mental to rethink not only the practices but also the means, of education, and not only to struc-ture a corpus, but also to improve—above every-thing else—the social conditions of reception. Francisco Hinojosa’s children’s fiction reveals how classic literary structures are capable of affecting the circumstances of educational recep-tion through successful practices that mediate instruction and delight, and the power relations in benefit of potential reading communities.

Notes1. Translation by Octavio de León.2. Hinojosa’s books do not have pagination.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksHinojosa, Francisco. Amadís de anis… Amadís

de codorniz [Anise Amadis… Amadis Quail]. México: Fondo de cultura Económica, 1993. Print.

—. Aníbal y Melquiades [Anibal and Melquiades]. México: Fondo de cultura Económica, 1991. Print.

—. El Castigo de Lucas [Lucas’ Punishment]. México: nostra, 2012. Print.

—. El Cocodrilo no sirve, es dragón. [The crocodile doesn’t Work, is dragon]. México: Santil-lana, 2004. Print.

—. La Peor señora del mundo [The World’s Worst Lady]. México: Fondo de cultura Económica, 1992. Print.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Glassbooks, n.d. PdF.

Secondary SourcesAlcubierre Moya, Beatriz. Ciudadanos del futuro.

Una historia de las publicaciones para niños en el siglo XIX mexicano [citizens of the Future: A History of children’s Publications from nineteenth century México]. México: El colegio de México - Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, 2010. Print.

colomer, Teresa. Andar entre libros. La lectura literaria en la escuela [Walking Among Books: Literary Reading at School]. México: Fondo de cultura Económica, 2005. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Vigilar y castigar [discipline and Punishment]. 2nd ed. México: Siglo, 2009. Print.

Montaño Garfias, Erika. “Los Libros no son para educar a los niños, sino para entretener: Hino-josa” [“Books Are not to Educate children, But to Entertain: Hinojosa”]. La Jornada, 17 June 2007. Web. 25 Aug. 2013.


María Elena Walsh reinvented the genre of children’s literature in Argentina. Writing under a series of repressive governments, Walsh exploited the perceived innocence of children’s literature, utilizing it as a conduit to criticize authority, while never abandoning her young readers. In her novel Dailan Kifki, the young, female protagonist is the sole voice of reason—a tribute to Louis Carroll’s Alice—who provide young readers with new ways of perceiving the world.

In support of this article, Alina Dunbar has received research grants from Northwestern University to travel to

the Internationale jugendbibliothek in Munich, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

She has served as the editor of Helicon Literary Magazine and the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Journal. Her

current research investigates the subversive qualities of nonsense in

children’s literature.

by ALINA DUNBAR

Mar

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lena

Wal

sh a

nd

the

Art

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MARíA ELEnA WALSH And THE ART OF SUBVERSIVE cHILdREn’S LITERATURE

It is unusual for a children’s book author to ascend to the position of national democratic hero and poet laureate of the imagination, but that is precisely what María Elena Walsh, born February 1, 1930 in

Ramos Mejía on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, accomplished during her lifetime. As a feminist, singer, folklorist, and legendary author, Walsh is remembered both as an outspoken critic of authoritarianism and a champion of children. Her entire life—and extensive oeuvre for chil-dren—was shaped by her experiences under the alternating horrors of repressive military and populist civilian governments, beginning with General José Félix Uriburu’s coup in the year of her birth, through the dashed promises of the Perón era, to the ruthless military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s (Romero 93-94; 215-16). In the shadow of these events and over the course of her life, Walsh was to transform the genre of children’s literature in Argentina.

What makes Walsh’s work all the more astounding is that she not only rejected the didacticism that had dominated children’s liter-ature in Latin America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (Muñoz 592), but blazed an entirely new creative and theoretical path by drawing inspiration from the two great Victo-rian nonsense writers for children, Edward Lear and Lewis carroll (Orrigi de Monge 38). One of the finest examples of her carrollian work is the novel Dailan Kifki, first published in 1966. In Dailan Kifki, as in her other works, Walsh utilizes nonsense words and hyperbolic situations to subtly suggest that authority is not immutable and unquestionable, that what seems logical is sometimes—in fact—upside-down, and that adults do not always have all of the answers.

Employing both close reading and cultural materialism, I consider the interaction between the literary nonsense in Walsh’s books, paying attention to both transgressive themes and the language used to develop those themes, as well as the wider social and political context in which the books were produced. I am indebted to the work of Jack Zipes, who has argued that discerning the meaning of a fantasy work requires knowledge of the socio-historical context (189). In order to subvert social norms and institutions, an author of children’s literature must first fundamentally understand those norms. Then, drawing upon the literary devices of wordplay, nonsense, humor, and satire—the tools of subversion—an author may seek to criticize or even ridicule the world he or she occupies. Though excellent Spanish-language accounts of Walsh’s life exist—most notably Sergio Pujol’s Como la cigarra [Like the cicada] and María Elena Walsh, o, “el desafío de la limitación” [María Elena Walsh, or The challenge of Limitation] by Ilse Luraschi and kay Sibbald—more basic biographical details will suffice for the purposes of this analysis. Understanding Walsh’s formative experiences and the

What makes Walsh’s work all the more astounding is that she not only rejected the didacticism that had dominated children’s literature in Latin America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (Muñoz 592), but blazed an entirely new creative and theoretical path by drawing inspiration from the two great Victorian nonsense writers for children, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.



political situation at the time Dailan Kifki was written and released allows for a deeper analysis of the novel and aids in the identification of subversive elements in the work.

Walsh was born to an Irish father and Argen-tine mother, and raised in a middle-class house-hold where she was regularly exposed to English nursery rhymes and traditional Argentine folk-lore songs. As she got older, she explored the writings of Jules Verne and charles dickens. This rich literary background perhaps helps to explain the early success Walsh found with her poetry. She released her first collection of poems, Otoño imperdonable [Unforgivable Autumn], at the age of 17 to widespread critical acclaim. She was subsequently invited to travel to the United States by the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez and took classes at the University of Maryland (Bach 12). After approximately six months in the United States, she returned to Argentina and continued to write poetry for adults.

Walsh tired of the political situation in Argentina and traveled to Paris at the age of 21 with Leda Valladares, with whom she formed an Argentine folklore duo. While in Europe, Walsh rediscovered her “inner child” and began to write poems and stories for children, which would later be released as the poetry collection Tutú marambá (no translation). Walsh stated that after

spending several years in Europe, she missed her patria [homeland], and writing poems for chil-dren was one way to reconnect with Argentina (Walsh Chaucha y Palito, 123). In 1956, following the overthrow and exile of Perón, Valladares and Walsh returned to Argentina.

despite having been completed years before, Tutú maramba was not published until 1960. Part of the delay was undoubtedly due to the political situation, which had only worsened over time. Another reason for the publication gap was that Walsh’s work was simply very unusual (Garralón 47-48). not only was it written specifically for children, which was in itself dubious, but her collection of poems was entertaining, not moral-izing, and creative, not didactic. After the delay, Tutú maramba was finally released and attracted wide critical and popular acclaim, marking Walsh’s clear ascendance as an author, singer, and storyteller for children.

Walsh was also an active voice against the infamous dictatorship in Argentina from 1979 to 1983; it was during this time that she wrote essays for the national newspapers Clarín [clarion] and La Nación [The nation] (“María Elena Walsh: Author of Books for children” n.p.), which were

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later collected and published as a book entitled Desventuras en el país-jardín-de-infantes [Misad-ventures in the kindergarten country]. Intended for an adult audience, the essays address themes of censorship, religion, education, and freedom of speech. They were widely read despite being officially banned by the Argentine government at the time (“María Elena Walsh: Author of Books for children” n.p.). Walsh continued writing for adults and children until her death in January 2011.

Walsh’s most prolific period was from 1960 to 1980, and it was during this time that she would publish many of what are now considered to be her most famous works. Scholar Alicia E. Origgi de Monge, who has completed the most highly recommended critical analysis of Walsh’s work to date, identified the “corpus” of Walsh’s writing that best represents her approach towards, and appropriation of, nonsense as utilized by Edward Lear and Lewis carroll. Included among these works is the novel Dailan Kifki (Origgi de Monge 33-34). By the time Dailan Kifki was published in 1966, Walsh had already spent a considerable amount of time abroad in self-imposed exile, been subjected to the pressures of patriarchy, and lived under a variety of oppressive governmental regimes. Dailan Kifki is unique because of its length, depth, and comparatively more explicit political and social critiques, and it is Walsh’s first novel to equal carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in terms of complexity. The transgressive themes in Dailan Kifki not only reflect the threats Walsh had already experienced, but also serve as a harbinger for how the Argentine government and society would change during the last military dictatorship from 1979 to 1983.

despite its importance, Dailan Kifki is understudied relative to Walsh’s other work; most scholars opt to study her poems or songs (Hazel 6-7). Little or no research has been done on Walsh’s novels exclusively, with the impor-tant exception of Alicia E. Origgi de Monge’s critical study. However, Origgi de Monge’s analysis is written in Spanish, thus rendering it—along with Dailan Kifki and many of Walsh’s books for children—inaccessible to most of the English-speaking world. This, and the fact that

an excellent English translation of Dailan Kifki by Paul dixon, a professor at Purdue University, was commissioned by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in the early 1990s but never published, may help to explain why there are no reviews dedicated to Dailan Kifki in English.1

Immediately, the most striking aspect of Dailan Kifki is its style, which is completely atyp-ical for the age and genre of the novel. Its text is lilting, humorous, nonsensical and—most impor-tantly—conversational. The opening paragraph of the novel captures the essence of what promises the reader to be a lighthearted and highly enter-taining series of adventures: “on Thursday I left a little early to walk my pet geranium through the street, like I do every Thursday, when I opened the door and BAM! What did I see? The hallway was blocked by an enormous gray mountain that wouldn’t let me pass” (11). That enormous gray mountain is, of course, the adorable—yet quite naughty—elephant dailan kifki, whom the female protagonist immediately befriends. note Walsh’s use of the word “zápate” (BAM!), which has no direct translation to English but is consid-ered onomatopoeic in Spanish. When combined with the ridiculous notion of taking a pet gera-nium for a walk, such language serves as an effec-tive introduction to the world of Dailan Kifki.

The whimsical speech and narration used throughout the novel mirrors an unremitting string of bizarre plot developments. A particu-larly salient example of form matching content is found in chapter Five. dailan kifki has managed to lodge herself in the upper branches of a fast-growing tree and is unable to make her way back to the ground. In a moment of inge-nuity, her new friend the firefighter decides that he and the protagonist must fashion a pair of wings out of household materials to help dailan kifki fly down from the tree: “the wings were very beautiful. Imagine. They were made from multicolored tulle, with little feathers and flecks of cellophane, and adorned with aluminum foil, silk ribbons, and a rosette that the firefighter added at the last minute” (38). Perhaps most amazing is that this hodge-podge of cellophane and silk ribbons actually works; a mere moment after the wings have been attached, dailan kifki



soars off into the distance with the firefighter on her back. To the protagonist’s annoyance, her mother is less concerned about

the missing elephant than she is about her daughter’s marital status. In fact, the protagonist is constantly irritated by her mother’s subtle hints regarding marriage and courtship, and seems to avoid romance on prin-ciple. Risa Marie Hazel has argued that Dailan Kifki “illustrates the oppressiveness (and the absurdity) of imposing a constant preoccupation with marriage upon a woman, especially since, in this case, the protago-nist has other pressing matters to attend to” (133). For Walsh, romance was often imbued with elements of patriarchy and gender inequality. In 2000 she defended her decision not to marry, recalling that when she was growing up, “in matters of courtship, it was all very romantic so long as the girl stayed obedient. Relationships between boys and girls were not as frank or as equal as they are now” (Walsh, Chaucha y Palito 127). Walsh’s convictions about courtship and marriage, though still somewhat unusual even today, were doubtless quite remarkable in mid-1960s Argentina. Her transgressive attitude toward traditional gender roles is embodied by the female protagonist of Dailan Kifki, whose actions encourage children, especially girls, to look beyond marriage for fulfillment and happiness.

Worried about the dangers that could befall her precious elephant, the young protagonist embarks upon a long and haphazard search through the various levels of Argentine bureaucracy. Here begins Walsh’s thinly veiled critique of Argentine politics and society. Walsh’s heroine, of course, is the sole voice of reason in a maze of incompetency, much like Alice navigating a nonsensical Wonderland. She begins her search for dailan kifki by appealing to the captain of the firefighters. Frustratingly, the captain speaks only in riddles and accuses the girl of stealing his employee. He orders her to “put on the hat you wear on the tram and go to the police station because you stole my firefighter” (49). The original Spanish text is lyrical, nonsensical, and full of rhymes and Walsh’s characteristic rhythm. The captain is one of many char-acters in Dailan Kifki who speaks either exclusively or almost always in rhyme. These rhymes, moreover, are in purist doggerel, rendering them nearly impossible to translate. It is interesting to note that the female protagonist is usually more frustrated than amused by these rhymes, reminiscent of the way Alice reacts to the creatures of Wonderland and their strange behavior. Walsh’s protagonist, like Alice, is seemingly the only responsible character in an Argentina full of inefficient, unhelpful, or accusatory adults. She is uncompromising in her search for clarity and truth, and the rhymes and nonsense responses she receives—amusing though they might be to the child reading the book—only thwart her attempts to locate her precious pet elephant.

The path through the absurdities continues. next, the protago-nist travels to the local municipal government. She is immediately confronted by a maze—“we arrived at city Hall and were attended to by the secretary of the secretary of the secretary of the secretary of the secretary of the Provincial Governor”—and finds that the Governor,

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outfitted in a green pea coat and a cardboard top hat, is of little use (51). Her appeal for assistance is met with another unhelpful suggestion to visit the Secretary of Aeronautics, who in turn insists that the girl meet with the ambassadors from all of the surrounding countries in case dailan kifki has mistakenly crossed an international border. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ambassadors are just as absurd as their Argentine counterparts:

The Brazilian Ambassador played the maracas and danced the samba. The Bolivian Ambassador danced the carnavalito. The Ambassador from Uruguay danced an African dance. The Ambassador from Paraguay ate an orange and danced the polka. The chilean Ambassador performed a handkerchief dance. The Ambassador from Peru sang and screamed. (55)

In this paragraph, Walsh extends her critique of the Argentine govern-ment to include the surrounding Latin American nations. Though best remembered in her home country, Walsh has stated that her aim was to create literature that could be enjoyed not just by Argentine chil-dren, but children throughout the Spanish-speaking world (Pardal 12). Furthermore, Walsh’s decision to include the nations of Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and more illustrates that Argentina’s political problems were not unique. Throughout the twentieth century, many Latin American countries struggled through anti-democratic periods and even military regimes similar to those in Argentina. This historical context helps to distinguish Walsh from Lewis carroll. Although carroll was known for including subtle critiques of the Victorian monarchy within his texts, it would be dubious at best to claim he was a representative of a popular democratic movement that extended beyond the English polit-ical sphere. carroll was idiosyncratically English, and is not hailed as the democratic hero Walsh often is. In this humorous passage, Walsh acknowledges that the foolishness and danger that had ensnared Argen-tina was, in fact, a very real threat to many Latin American nations at the time.

When, at long last, the girl manages to find dailan kifki, she has visited the Astronomical Observatory, talked with the Admiral of the Argentine navy, passed through the constitutional Plaza and—most importantly—visited the “Zindicate of the kyte-Fliers,” as it might be translated into English (75). This organization, whose name should (of course) read “Syndicate of the kite-Flyers,” is run by a group of ragtag boys, which explains the intentional misspelling in Spanish. Ostensibly, an entire branch of the Argentine government has been taken over by homeless boys!

These jabs may seem like harmless fun, but the political implica-tions are clear. Through the use of nonsense highlighting impenetrable, maze-like bureaucratic structures, Walsh levies a sharp and clever—but indirect and even covert—satire on the self-importance and blundering ineffectiveness of Argentine government at all levels. More importantly,



her presentation of the ridiculously incompetent Admiral, Governor, captain and other authority figures suggests to the reader that those in power in Argentina are no more than silly buffoons who can be easily outwitted by a child. It is a particularly powerful message Walsh sends to her youthful readership: by presenting the protagonist, a young girl, as competent and the government officials as hopelessly bumbling and confused, Walsh plants the idea that her readers are better equipped to run the country. She does not need to invent a Wonderland for her readers to wander through; Argentina is in reality that dystopian and ridiculous land!

Walsh’s representation of Argentina as a kindergarten country, as an upside-down kingdom, is underscored when an elf mysteri-ously appears and invites the girl and her elephant to dine on chocolate in his palace in the Forest of Gulubú2. Outraged, the protagonist’s grandfather insists that there is no such place: “‘This Forest of Gulubú does not exist,’ Grandfather screamed. ‘Show me, show me! Point it out to me with your finger on this map of the Republic of Argentina, huh? Show me!’” (128). The elf retorts that not everything that is real is visible on a map. Here, Walsh sends yet another important message to her readers; despite the fanciful nature of the exchange between the elf and the grandfather, Walsh demonstrates that sometimes, the truest things are those we cannot see. This observation has enormous implications in a country infa-mous for its thousands of “disappeared” citizens. Though the number of forcible “disappearances” reached its apex during the last military regime, at the time Dailan Kifki was published, covert and violent action by the Argentine govern-ment against its citizens was already a fact of life. Insisting, as the Grandfather does about Gulubú, that these disappearances were not taking place

was foolish at best, and complicit at worse. That Walsh was able to contain this dangerously subversive message within her novel demon-strates the flexibility and political potential of children’s literature.

The elf, of course, turns out to be right. The girl, dailan kifki, and her entire entourage (including the still-fuming Grandfather) all squeeze into the elf ’s tiny carriage and are trans-ported to the Forest of Gulubú which—as the elf has promised—is indeed within the borders of the Republic of Argentina. Gulubú is full of rivers of chocolate, castles made from baked goods, and talkative butterflies. While everyone is delighted by the chocolate, no one seems espe-cially surprised by anything else they experience in this bizarre forest. In fact, we see a repetition of the earlier plot sequence as dailan kifki wanders off and the girl must begin another earnest and haphazard search for her. This mirroring of events is uncanny in that exactly the same problem—a lost elephant—can occur in both the “real” Argentina and in its strange mirror image, the “mystical” Gulubú. Here Walsh compares her own version of Wonderland to the Argentine reality and finds that the worlds in front of and behind the looking glass are quite similar. This is in sharp contrast to the original Alice, in which all of the protagonist’s adventures take place while she naps on the riverbank. Instead of acknowl-edging a division between fantasy and reality, the absurd and the normal, Walsh situates her fantasy world within Argentina. The result is that her readers have an amplified understanding of their own reality and are encouraged to use their imaginations to criticize it.

Especially interesting is the “confession of my Aunt clodomira” section, which takes place near the end of the Gulubú sequence. In a strange departure from the rest of the novel, chapter Thirty-Five contains the protestations of Aunt clodomira, who has been accused of destroying the elf ’s castle. While she at first denies the accu-sation, clodomira eventually capitulates and confesses her guilt: “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me… Well, yes, it was me, but I didn’t mean to do it” (197). For two pages the fright-ened Aunt babbles on, until she concludes her

That Walsh was able to contain this dangerously subversive message

within her novel demonstrates the flexibility and political potential of

children’s literature.

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speech by saying, “now I have confessed every-thing, Mr. detective, arrest me” (198). Though her punishment is not severe (she is charged with rebuilding the castle, with help from the deni-zens of Gulubú), the “confession of my Aunt clodomira” is nevertheless a striking section. This confession is the closest Walsh comes to mimicking the frightening reality of what the Argentina of the 1950s and 1960s was really like: full of disappearances, public denouncements, military control, and forced confessions. Here Walsh depicts a nonsensical situation—someone being punished for destroying a castle made out of bakery items—that had disturbing parallels in Argentina at that time. As such, through the use of a ridiculous scenario, Walsh reveals the ridiculousness of the actual confessions. This, again, supports the idea that the strange Gulubú is a reflection of the real, warped Argentina. Yet Walsh wisely choses to place this covert critique of the Argentine government deep within the fantasy world of the Forest of Gulubú, and, subse-quently, the entire episode was overlooked by government censors. This is a compelling display of the subversive power of children’s literature.

Furthermore, by placing the Forest of Gulubú squarely within Argentina’s borders despite the fact that it does not appear on any map, Walsh asserts that Gulubú is not an inaccessible fantasy-land, but rather a land of imagination to which all Argentines have access. nor is it reserved exclu-sively for children. Girls, boys, aunts, firefighters, grandfathers, and elephants are all welcome. Gulubú, the collective imaginary, has always been there—one must just remember to look for it. This is the most precious gift that Walsh offers to her readers: the explicit acknowledge-ment of a collective imagination, of a fantasy land within Argentina itself, of the tenuous, perhaps invisible, divide between what is real and what is not. After all, nonsense can be a higher form of reason. clearly, the adults in Dailan Kifki, who ostensibly operate within the realm of “reason” but who in fact are just hostages to their own very limited—and limiting—worldviews, are often wrong about what is “true”, such as the grandfa-ther challenged by the existence of Gulubú and the whirlwind of bureaucratic officials who have

no idea how to do their jobs. The girl’s mother likewise insists throughout the story that her daughter must find a man to marry, in spite of the fact that not one reasonable man is present anywhere in the book. Walsh’s critique—though hidden from many adult readers, including those oh-so-serious censors—is that children should not succumb to what the adults and the govern-ment claim is true. Equipped with this knowl-edge, Argentine children are free to explore and trust their own instincts, and maybe meet a friendly elephant along the way.

Though Dailan Kifki is a particularly rich example of Walsh’s work, her other books and poems for children are no less deserving of further study. Her legacy is such that since approximately 1980, scholars have divided the history of Argen-tine children’s literature into two eras: pre- and post-Walsh (Itzcovich 9; “María Elena Walsh” 3; Gran diccionario 924), and numerous children’s writers have emulated her style. nearly all of her books are still in print today and are widely avail-able in Argentina’s bookstores and libraries. In 2010, the Teatro Argentina put together a special production incorporating Walsh’s songs, char-acters, and lyrics in an homage to the author, and since Walsh’s death in 2011, newspapers and literary supplements have continued to publish special pieces highlighting the impor-tance of Walsh’s contributions to Argentine children’s literature and society at large. In addi-tion to her literary accomplishments, Walsh is also remembered as a people’s hero. Among the phrases Walsh coined that have since entered the Argentine cultural lexicon are Nomeacuerdo [I don’t remember], disparate [nonsense], and el país-jardín-de-infantes [kindergarten country], all of which are subversively critical. Walsh helped shape the language of a particular genera-tion, and there persists an intimate connection

She blessed children, and adults, with the gift of a different worldview and empowered them to think critically and independently.



between Walsh and her readers. She blessed children, and adults, with the gift of a different worldview and empowered them to think criti-cally and independently. despite the many roles she fulfilled—poet, children’s author, singer, songwriter, playwright, subversive figure, femi-nist, social critic—her most important role, by far, was champion of the imagination.

Notes1. Personal communication with Jeffrey Garrett.2. To clarify, Walsh published Cuentopos de

Gulubú, a separate book containing a menag-erie of stories about the mystical land of Gulubú in 1966, the same year in which Dailan Kifki was published. The adventures that the protagonist of Dailan Kifki has in Gulubú are not repeated in Cuentopos de Gulubú as Walsh intended this to be a separate collection.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksWalsh, María Elena. Chaucha y Palito. Buenos

Aires: Alfaguara, 2000. Print. —. Dailan Kifki. 1st ed. Buenos Aires: L. Fariña,

1966. Print. —. Dailan Kifki. Madrid: Siruela, 2009. Print. —. Tutú marambá. Buenos Aires: Plin, 1960.

Print.

Secondary SourcesBach, caleb. “A child’s Wisdom in a Poet’s

Heart.” Américas (English Edition) 47.3 (1995): 12-17. Print.

Garralón, Ana. “María Elena Walsh, o el discreto encanto de la tenacidad” [Maria Elena Walsh, or The discreet charm of Tenacity]. CLIJ: cuadernos de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil 9.80 (1996): 44-52.

Gran diccionario de autores latino americanos de literatura infantil y juvenil. Vol. 1.1. Ed. Padrino, Jaime García. Madrid: Fundación SM, 2010.

Hazel, Risa Marie. “Traditions and Transfor-mations in the Stories for children by María Elena Walsh.” diss. University of Texas at Austin, 1983. Print.

Itzcovich, Susana. Introduction. Textura del disparate: estudio crítico de la obra infantil de María Elena Walsh. Alicia E. Orrigi de Monge. Buenos Aires: Lugar Editorial, 2004.

Luraschi, Ilse A. and kay Sibbald. María Elena Walsh, o,“el desafío de la limitación” [María Elena Walsh, or, “the challenge of limita-tion”]. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1993. Print.

“María Elena Walsh: Author of Books for chil-dren.” ALIJA, Asociación de Literatura infantil y Juvenil de la Argentina, Sección nacional de IBBY. dossier. Buenos Aires, 1994.

Muñoz, Manuel Peña. Historia de la literatura infantil en América Latina [The History of children’s Literature in Latin America]. Bogotá: Fundación SM, 2009. Print.

Origgi de Monge, Alicia E. Textura del disparate: estudio crítico de la obra infantil de María Elena Walsh [Texture of nonsense: critical Study of the Work for children by María Elena Walsh]. Buenos Aires: colección Relecturas Lugar Editorial, 2004. Print.

Pardal, Ian. “María Elena Walsh: From Sensitive Songwriter to Feisty Feminist.” Buenos Aires Herald 12 March 1989: 12-13. Print.

Pujol, Sergio. Como la cigarra: biografía de María Elena Walsh [Like the cicada: Biography of María Elena Walsh]. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2011. Print.

Romero, Luis Alberto. A History of Argen-tina in the Twentieth Century. Trans. James P. Brennan. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2002. Print.

Walsh, María Elena. Otoño imperdonable [Unfor-givable autumn]. Buenos Aires: Ipr. Ferrari

Hnos, 1947. Print. —. Desventuras en el país-jardín-de-infantes.

Buenos Aires: Sudamerica, 1993. Print. Zipes, Jack. “The Age of commodified Fantati-

cism: Reflections on children’s Literature and the Fantastic.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 9.4 (1984-5): 187-90. Print.


On March 11, 1996, three days after the international commemoration of Women’s day, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLn) [Zapatista national Liberation

Army] released the text “Twelve Women in the Twelfth Year: The Moment of War” (Ponce de León 5-12). This document highlights the contribution, and recognizes the importance, of the armed and unarmed women that took part in the Zapatista struggle. This work

This article is about the Zapatista’s ongoing struggle for resistance and autonomy. We show in what sense the stories written by Subcommander Marcos of the EZLN have not been written only for children or for the indigenous in Chiapas (or anywhere else in Mexico), but for those individuals whose history has the age of the modern state. We propose that the movement’s latest initiative, “La libertad según las zapatistas,” should be discussed alongside the EZLN’s previous literary production of children’s literature, and has contributed in the formation of a new kind of subject: “the new children of resistance.”

The New

Children of Resistance: B

ecoming a Child through the Stories Told by the EZLN


Irene Fenoglio Limón has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Binghamton University. She is a Professor of Literary

Theory and Mexican Literature at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, in Cuernavaca, México. She

researches Latin American theory and the relation between literature

and politics in contemporary Mexican narrative. She has published several articles in books and journals, and

coedited Análisis del Discurso: Estrategias y Propuestas de Lectura, as

well as La tradición teórico-crítica en América Latina: Mapas y Perspectivas.

Rodrigo Mier studied English Literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and obtained his

PhD in Comparative Literature at State University of New York (Binghamton).

He is a full-time lecturer in 19th century Latin American Literature

and Contemporary Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado

de Morelos (México), where he does research in rhetoric and politics. He has

written extensively on diverse topics, concentrating especially on the politics

of the EZLN.

by IRENE FENOGLIO LIMóN

by RODRIGO MIER GONZÁLEZ CADAVAL

speaks of Maribel, an insurgent woman who participated in the military actions of the war’s first days, in 1994, when the Zapatistas said, “¡Ya basta!” [“Enough!”] and rebelled against the Mexican government. It was during the early days of the uprising that the movement captured the former governor of chiapas, Absalón castellanos domínguez. A few weeks later, the EZLn published a communiqué in which the outcome of the popular trial held against this man was reported. He was found guilty of innumerable crimes and condemned to a life of hard work in an indigenous community in chiapas. His sentence, however, was immediately commuted: Absalón castellanos would be physically released and condemned to live thereafter with the shame of knowing that he had been “pardoned” by the very indigenous group that he had, for many years, humiliated, kidnapped, robbed and killed (EZLn, Docu-mentos 1 104-106). Maribel, present when General castellanos was released on February 16, established contact with the State’s official commissioner for Peace and Reconciliation in chiapas, Manuel camacho Solís. The text tells how he, apparently struck by the girl’s

youth, asked her how old she was. Her answer was blunt: “‘Five hundred and two,’ …as old as the rebellion” (Ponce de León 9).

deliberately or not, unmasking Maribel’s young age would have helped to delegitimize the movement by showing, in a rather naïve way, how it recruited (or, as those opposed to the EZLn would say, manipulated) the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, that is, the indigenous peoples of chiapas. Maribel’s unexpected answer not only revealed the pervasiveness and fervency of the indig-enous resistance in chiapas, but more importantly, it challenged the State’s authority with a powerful counterhistory that had been mobilized by Maribel’s people themselves. Following Foucault, this alternate historical discourse uncovered how indigenous people had “been carefully, deliberately, and wickedly misrepresented as chil-dren; infantilized (Society 72). However shocking, Maribel’s answer posed an important and uncomfortable question to all of us who have heard her words and followed the movement’s struggle for justice, democracy and liberty: when it comes to resistance, how old are we? How old can we say we are?

The above incident is not an isolated event. Furthermore, we believe that through a series of rather childish fantasies and displacements, the same discourse present in the innocent question posed by the State’s official commissioner for Peace and Recon-ciliation can be perceived in other scenarios. More than once, for

General Castellanos… apparently struck by the girl ’s youth, asked her how old she was. Her answer was blunt: “‘Five hundred and two,’ …

as old as the rebellion”.

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THE nEW cHILdREn OF RESISTAncE

outburst (or, perhaps, knowing perfectly well), created an infantilizing category (or, perhaps, perfectly congruent with its ideology) in an effort to put the Zapatistas in their place: “ fuerza política en formación” [“political force in forma-tion”]. Subcommander Marcos was quick to note that this classification promotes a perception of indigenous peoples as immature and incapable of self-organization. In a communiqué published on January 31, 1994, Marcos wondered what the idea of a political force in formation might imply:

does it mean that there aren’t thousands of indigenous [people] who have risen because they are still “in formation”? … What kind of citizens are the indigenous [peoples] in chiapas? Are they “citizens in formation”? For the federal govern-ment, … indigenous [peoples] continue to be small children. does this mean “adults in formation”? When will they understand?4 (EZLn, Documentos 2 112-113)

Yes, we could ask ourselves, when will the govern-ment and the general population, Marcos’s they, understand? When will they grow up? But also, in a more reflexive and uncomfortable way, when will we understand? When will we grow up?

There is little doubt that the emergence of the EZLn in 1994 and their two-decade struggle for democracy, justice, and liberty have had an effect on the way many individuals and collectives think, and on the practice of politics of resistance today. It is difficult to imagine a leftist initiative in Latin America that is not or has not been in some way or another touched by the theory and the practice deployed by the Zapatistas in their many interventions, literary or not. But how have Zapatista initiatives and writings touched the minds and hearts of leftist intellectuals, sympa-thizers, social activists, and collectives in Latin America or Europe? We believe, and this is what we will address in the following pages, that the stories told by Subcommander Marcos in many documents and communiqués have played an important, if not decisive, role in the processes of resistance. A number of these stories, organized

example, we have been asked what we thought of the “fact” that Subcommander Marcos, the movement’s spokesperson, was living a life of luxury and excess in Paris. Or, more recently, we were “informed” of the secret encounter between Subcommander Marcos and the representa-tive of a private firm, who was offered a fancy reception with expensive prosciutto and cognac. comforting as they may be for a certain sector of the population, these fantasies not only lack the most basic kind of factual evidence; they are, more importantly, symptomatic of a series of deeply embedded cultural truisms: indians are stupid and, consequently, easily manipulated; indians have nothing and, therefore, will accept anything they are offered; indians live in a state of immaturity and will only be of age when they leave behind their obsolete cultural practices.1 nonetheless, the Zapatista movement in chiapas (and Maribel’s answer is only one case in point) has simultaneously inverted and disrupted this colonial construct: it has not only proved that the indigenous are not stupid, lacking or immature, but also that they can govern themselves, that they can produce alternative forms of organiza-tion that are not dependent on the authority of the Mexican State or any of its institutions.

Although the Zapatista “¡Ya basta!” [Enough!] condenses this deconstructive double gesture, it has taken much more than two words to mobi-lize their political project.2 As we will try to show, one of the fundamental strategies deployed by the movement has been the translation of their struggle into a series of “children stories.” More than recruiting individuals and collectives outside the movement to support their struggle, the EZLn has done something much more ambi-tious: it has sought to constitute new subjects. In the process of its formation, the EZLn has developed in its discourse an interesting though not very evident inversion that can be summa-rized thus: you, who thought that the indigenous still lived in a state of immaturity, are indeed the real children when it comes to resistance.

The infantilization of indigenous peoples was denounced by the EZLn only a few weeks after it was originally organized in 1994. The State, not knowing how to “classify” this unexpected social



under the characters of Old Antonio and don durito de la Lacandona, are told as if they had been written and meant for children. Yet, it is quite difficult to imagine that many of these stories could be of any interest to young readers or that they were produced for young readers. The question, nonetheless, remains open: who, if not children, is the intended audience of these stories? Who, if not children, should take the place of the addressee? And what, aside from the enjoyment that some readers might find in reading them, could be mobilized in their words? We believe that, intentionally or not, the stories told by the EZLn are indeed addressed to children, but in a very particular way; the EZLn narratives are addressed to that underdeveloped side of our adult subjec-tivity that is quite young when it comes to resistance. If we recall Mari-bel’s answer to the question about her age, we could say that the stories of Old Antonio and don durito have contributed to shape a subjectivity that makes certain individuals outside the movement position them-selves as children before the counterhistory disclosed by the indigenous in chiapas: unlike Maribel, these persons are not five hundred and two years old, but young children who know little, or nothing, about resis-tance. Although the following pages concentrate on some of the stories written by Marcos, we believe that, taken in toto, this literary strategy deployed by the EZLn between 1994 and 2003 can be linked to the latest Zapatista initiative, which began in August 2013. The last pages of this article comment briefly on this latest venture.

The Stories of Old Antonio and Don DuritoAlthough one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Zapatista movement is the proliferation of their writing as well as the stature of

Subcommander Marcos as an innovative and original author, if one were to understand the Zapatista move-ment on the basis of what could be called their “literary production,” such knowledge would be very limited. The literary production of the EZLn has been under-stood for its most part as being constituted by those texts which feature the characters of Old Antonio, a sort of Mayan sage and spiritual leader, and don durito de la Lacandona, a beetle that parodies the figure of Miguel de cervantes’s don Quixote. As short stories, the literary attributes of these texts have allowed them to be captured by the editorial market (both mainstream and alterna-tive) and published as literature in individual books or in compilations as much in Spanish as in other languages. We stress the particle “as,” for they were originally part of larger communiqués that appeared in clearly conjunctive circumstances. For the purposes of this article, it is worth noting that some of these stories have been published in their own right as children’s books. This is the case, in Spanish, of La historia de las preguntas [The Story of Questions], La historia de los colores [The Story of colors],

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La historia de los sueños [The Story of dreams], and La historia de la espada, el árbol, la piedra y el agua [The Story of the Sword, the Tree, the Stone, and Water] all issued by Ediciones colec-tivo callejero. conceived editorially as a collec-tion of children’s books, they are attractively illustrated by local artists, and have large print and a manageable format akin to what we find in books produced for young readers. In English, Questions and Swords: Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution and The Story of Colors / La Historia de los Colores share these same characteristics but in a larger format. The latter, furthermore, is adver-tised on Amazon.com as a children’s book suitable for ages 9-12. What all these publications have in common is that they have undergone a process of “literaturization.” In other words, these texts have been extracted from the communiqués the Zapatistas have used as the main means of communication with the world outside the movement and presented as individually self-contained fictional texts. In their transit from the communiqués in which they originally appeared to the short stories in which they have been disseminated as children’s literature, these texts have, among other things, lost their context (they were part of a commu-niqué and served a certain strategic purpose), their history (the particular political conjuncture in which they were written) and their urgency.4

The process that has dismantled the commu-niqué, literaturized one of its components, and turned this part into children’s literature may be observed in the following rough analysis of “The Story of Questions,” a text that has been published independently in different book forms. It is part of the december 13, 1994 communiqué, which was written during a complex historical moment for the EZLn: there had recently been suspect elections for governor in chiapas, and the Zapatistas elected Amado Avendaño, a civilian, as governor-in-rebellion; moreover, the Mexican army had broken the ceasefire agreement with the EZLn.

In terms of the narrative structure, the communiqué has different discursive levels: it includes two letters (one framed within the other), the “story of questions” (which is included in the second letter) and two postscripts. That is, it is structured as if in concentric circles. The theme of the first communiqué is the forewarning of the imminent attack on the EZLn by the Mexican army, which, as Marcos explains, has forced him, for security reasons, to burn the many letters from sympa-thizers he has received and has not yet been able to answer. Marcos

In their transit from the communiqués in which they originally appeared to the short stories in which they have been disseminated as children’s literature, these texts have, among other things, lost their context (they were part of a communiqué and served a certain strategic purpose), their history (the particular political conjuncture in which they were written) and their urgency.



then writes a general response to these letters, which constitutes the second level of discourse. This framed letter is a representation of everyday life in the Zapatista camp. It underscores the way in which political and organizational activi-ties are constantly interrupted by the children of the community. The particular scenario is the following: Marcos is hiding away some candy, but the noise of the cellophane wrapping gives him away. Several children surround him: Heriberto, Toñita, and Eva. Marcos is forced by the situation to give Heriberto the bag of candy he was saving for Eva, who is celebrating her birthday that day. In an attempt to solve the problem, he tells the children that in order to receive the gift they first have to guess a story. Old Antonio then appears symbolically to help him: “gesturing towards a small Zapata silver figure.” writes Marcos: “he repeats, now through my own voice, the ‘story of questions’” (EZLn, Docu-mentos 2 159).

This story, too, is narrated within another one: the frame story happens in another place and time, “ten years before the dawn of January” (i.e. 1984), when Marcos is teaching other guerrillas how to survive in the mountains (159). There he meets Old Antonio for the first time, and hesi-tatingly they sit down to talk about the origins of the EZLn and its relation with Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican Revolution. Old Antonio asks Marcos what he knows about Zapata, and the guerrilla produces a story that comes right out of history textbooks: “I begin by telling him of Anenecuilco, the Plan de Ayala, the military campaign, the way the communities were organized, the chinameca treason” (160). Old Antonio, however, corrects Marcos and announces that he will tell him the true story of Zapata: the story of questions, which is a founda-tional story about Ik’al and Votán, two comple-mentary gods attached to each other, that learn to move forward by asking questions. When the narration is over, Marcos asks about the

relationship between the story and Zapata, and Old Antonio reveals that Ik’al and Votán eventu-ally embodied in Zapata. After this, the old man gives Marcos a photograph of Zapata, which is a sort of legacy that symbolically unites the historic struggles of the Mayas with those of the Mexican Revolution and of the EZLn. The narrative then returns to the second level, where the children that had been listening to Old Antonio’s story (recounted through the voice of Marcos) start asking questions about the photo of Zapata that Marcos pulls out of his bag. At the end, the story returns to the present, where Marcos reflects on whether the photograph “is our past or our future” and decides to give it to Ana María, a Zapatista insurgent, so as to keep in mind where their struggle is heading (163).

Is “The Story of Questions” a story for chil-dren? Putting aside the answer, we can affirm

that it is presented as if it were. The same could be said of others that are explicitly addressed to children. Take the case, for example, of the story in which durito makes his debut in the discourse of the EZLn: on April 10, 1994, Marcos wrote a letter to a young girl whom the movement gave

the honorary military rank of “Subcommander,” thanks to a drawing she sent: “I salute you respect-fully and congratulate you on your drawing and recently acquired degree. Let me tell you a story that maybe one day you’ll understand. It is the story of durito” (EZLn, Documentos 1 217). Likewise, the first Old Antonio story, included in one of the many postscripts to the August 24, 1994 communiqué, is explicitly addressed to a child (EZLn, Documentos 2, 33). Moreover, in some of the earlier communiqués different stories are framed in a narrative context where Marcos tells them to children of the community, often with the intention of averting a problem caused by him. However, it is remarkable that in the editorial preparation of these texts as individual children’s stories (as is the case with “The Story of

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Questions”), what is lost is precisely the historico-political context that situates and produces them as such, as well as the wider lesson the particular stories are supposed to teach.

Turning those stories into children’s litera-ture and, simultaneously, erasing their historical and political conditions of emergence makes one wonder about the rules that organize the discursive formation of those texts intended for the young: are history and politics (i.e. commu-niqués) only meant for adults? Or, are they only addressed to adults, because they are boring and, naturally, of no interest to children? Leaving aside the question of whether these stories are (or are not) children’s literature, we believe that they can, at a more profound level, be read as a discourse that has contributed to the constitution of new subjects, regardless of their age. To put it differently, these stories have not been addressed to specific individuals (e.g. children or adults) but to those subjects that, as we pointed out earlier, know little or nothing about resistance, much less about its implications.

Regardless of whether we link these stories back to the communiqués in which they origi-nally appeared or take them as literary texts in their own right, the fact that they are no longer being produced by the EZLn reveals an impor-tant change in the movement’s discursive strat-egies. In August 2003, the Zapatistas founded the so-called “caracoles” [Snails or conchs], the five regional civil centers that organize the neighboring autonomous municipalities where the movement’s base supporters live. Upon their foundation, Marcos announced that he returned to the indigenous of chiapas the word they had lent him. Although Marcos has continued to write to and communicate with those indi-viduals “outside” the movement, the figures of Old Antonio and don durito have somehow dwindled in the discourse of the EZLn. Thus we could say that, for those of us used to the seduc-tion of innumerable literary statements mobilized in different writings produced by the EZLn, the rhetoric of the movement has since then become uninteresting, if not boring. Perhaps we need only invoke an extract from a seven-part communiqué published in August 2004, on the eve of the first

anniversary of the caracoles. These communi-qués, written for us by Subcommander Marcos, parody the video form.5 In the last part of this Zapatista “video,” one that lacked both images and sound (Marcos argued that it was part of the movement’s “technology of resistance”), we can follow on a daily basis the rather anodyne activi-ties that take place in Zapatista territory:

“13 teachers from different communities got together here in caracol IV, where they practiced how to teach the conso-nants L - cH - J - B – k” (Monday: caracol Morelia)

“We received our Japanese brothers from the Zapatista solidarity organization who want to collaborate on the murals. We wrote the letter to the dutch organiza-tion that has the project of nine pharma-cies, three health centers, training and an ambulance” (Tuesday: caracol Roberto Barrios);

“The Junta of Good Government received some people from the PRd of Ocos-ingo, who wanted to report the robbery of nine horses, four saddles and a power saw” (Wednesday: caracol La Garrucha). (EZLn, Caracoles 123-128).

The above statements, we believe, are part of the discursive rhetoric of Zapatista autonomy, a discourse that, invoking the terms used by Foucault to describe the labor of genealogy, is “gray,” “meticulous,” and “patiently documen-tary” (“nietzsche” 76). The mythic stories told by Old Antonio or the heroic adventures narrated by the beetle durito were absent in this other discourse for many years. The unspectacular and microphysical everyday struggles for autonomy and resistance in chiapas have also meant a decentering of Marcos. The progressive dissolu-tion of his presence in the movement has brought the new subjects of resistance closer to the reali-ties of autonomy and farther from the literary fantasies mobilized by him for nearly a decade. However, these two moments in the life of the EZLn should not be read separately, but as part



of a more extended project. Moreover, we believe that this passage from literature to autonomy has also meant a change in the subjectivity of a number of individuals that can see themselves today as children who have a lot to learn from those who, like the Zapatistas, have fought for their own autonomy in their “particular calendar and geography,” as they themselves might put it. The latest Zapatista initiative, which we will only mention briefly, seems to corroborate our hypothesis about the power of literature to change subjects and subjectivities, particularly, as we have shown, turning adults into children.

“Liberty According To the Zapatistas”Participating today as a non-Zapatista in the movement’s ongoing struggle for autonomy would most probably mean witnessing the devel-opment of their latest initiative: “La libertad según las zapatistas [Freedom according to the Zapatistas]. This new project has, once again, caught the attention and enthusiasm of sympa-thizers, adherents, and solidarity groups in México and around the world. This initiative has been structured as a didactic program in which different indigenous members of the community become the instructors (or teachers) and the non-Zapatistas their pupils. This strategy explains the reason why this project has also been termed “La escuelita Zapatista” [The Little Zapatista Schoolhouse]. Through direct invitations, the

movement has sought to bring a series of individuals and collectives to their territory so they may bear witness to the results of their struggle for liberty, justice, and democracy, and experience in a direct way how the Zapatistas organize and deal in everyday practices with their self-proclaimed autonomy.6

As they began their five day course, from August 12 to August 16, 2013, the 1,700 students that formed this first generation of the “Zapatista School” were given a series of four booklets and two cd’s in which the Zapatista’s independent media had gathered a number of testimonies rendered by militants directly involved in the civil organi-zation of the movement since 2003, when the caracoles were founded. during their stay in one of the caracoles, the students were assigned a guide or guardian (a Votán) and sent with a Zapatista family for the week. Aside from participating in the daily activities performed by these families, the students had to go over the information contained in the booklets and ask questions, which were then translated by their Votán from Spanish to one of the different languages spoken in chiapas.

For anyone familiar with the written production of the move-ment, the content of these booklets and the experiences shared by the Zapatistas strike one as rather odd. Instead of the well-known rhet-oric of the movement, what we find here is what we could tentatively

Through direct invitations, the movement has sought to bring a

series of individuals and collectives to their territory so they may

bear witness to the results of their struggle for liberty, justice, and democracy, and experience in a direct way how the Zapatistas organize and deal in everyday

practices with their self-proclaimed autonomy.

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term micro-testimonies of resistance and autonomy. There are no master narratives in these stories, only singular collective experiences that illustrate what resisting actually has meant for the Zapatistas in their communities and municipalities. Those attending the Zapatista School, then, become “children” ready to begin the first course of their elementary education. However, it is significant, too, that in this effort to educate Zapatista sympathizers, turning them in practical terms into children ready to learn the principles of liberty, resistance and autonomy, Marcos resuscitated the figure of don durito de la Lacandona. In a text published on July 28, 2013, as part of a series of communiqués with the instructions for the Zapatista students-to-be, Marcos announced: “Yes, durito is back … [He] told me that now is the best moment to reappear, when a very small group of people … are waiting for the Zapatista School to begin” (www.enlace zapatista.org).

ConclusionThere is nothing conclusive about the Zapatista movement. As we have tried to show, its struggle for autonomy, together with an ongoing resis-tance that has deployed different strategies within the communities as well as outside their territory, can be separated and simultaneously artic-ulated in the literary stories about Old Antonio and don durito, and, more recently, in the testimonies rendered by the Zapatistas themselves, either in the words published by the movement’s independent media or in the micro-testimonies produced by its members during the days of the Zapatista school. The patient formation of subjects through the stories told by the EZLn in different documents and communiqués has contributed to the constitution of a particular kind of subject in México and abroad. These subjects—what we have termed “the new children of resistance”—are in the process of exiting or leaving the status of imma-turity and dependency in which they have lived with respect to the authority of the State. Reformulating kant’s well-known motto Aude sapere! [dare to know!], which fuels his response to the question Was ist Aufklärung? [What Is Enlightenment?] (Foucault, “Enlightenment” 32), we could say that the exigency of the Zapatistas seems to be that we dare to fight for autonomy and that we dare to resist.7 The efficacy of their strategy seems to be so far corroborated by the amount of people that attended their first course, and by the fact that more courses are taking place with ever more students participating. We can only suspect (or anticipate) that those first graders who completed or will complete their first course on “Liberty according to the Zapatistas” will continue their formation in chiapas and, more importantly, will continue to fight in their own time and place for a way out of that state of immaturity in which we have learned to accept uncritically the authority of the modern State and its institutions. Today, the new children of resistance have returned to chiapas as students. But they have not returned to listen to



the stories told by Marcos, but to learn from their Zapatista teachers the meaning of autonomy, resistance, and liberty.

Notes1. For recent work on the important role played

by children in the definition and configura-tion of complex social, political, cultural, and economical experiences in Latin America, we recommend Sosenksi and Jackson Albar-rán’s Nuevas miradas a la historia de la infancia en América Latina. Although the identifica-tion of the indigenous as children is not the book’s main objective, it can nonetheless be inferred in many of its articles how these two figures have not only been interchange-able in different moments and places in Latin America but, more importantly, fundamental in the mobilization and definition of many of its political and cultural projects. Especially relevant in this sense is the article by Javier Sánez Obregón “La infancia de la infancia. Particularidades y efectos del discurso sobre la degeneración de la raza colombiana en los años veinte y treinta del siglo pasado” (209-240).

2. “double gesture” and “double science” are the two syntagms used by Jacques derrida in Posi-tions to explain the labor of deconstruction.

3. All translations from the communiqués are our own.

4. A fuller exposition of this process is found in Irene Fenoglio, “Literatura y política: los comunicados Zapatistas.” Análisis del discurso: estrategias y propuestas de lectura. Irene Feno-glio Limón, Lucille Herrasti y cordero and Agustín Rivero Franyutti, eds.

5. Marcos presented this communiqué as if it were a video. It was, in fact, a response to a recent “scandal” in Mexican politics, where a series of political actors had been caught on video while performing different acts of corruption. The media released these videos and turned them into a spectacle. If anything, the communiqué released by the EZLn showed, by contrast, the unspectacular side of resistance.

6. Although the notion of autonomy has been the driving force since the movement’s first

public appearance on January 1, 1994, we can see in retrospect that it took the Zapatistas nearly ten years to come up with a rhetorical and political structure that defined in a clear way how exactly they planned to accomplish this autonomy. It is in the heterotopic spaces of the caracoles where we must think not only about the present state of the movement, but also about their latest initiative, “La escuelita Zapatista” [The Little Zapatista Schoolhouse].

7. We refer the reader to Foucault’s text and not to kant’s, for we believe it is more produc-tive to link Foucault’s reflections on liberty, resistance, and autonomy with the Zapatista movement.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksSubcomandante Insurgente Marcos. La historia de

las preguntas. Guadalajara, México: Ediciones colectivo callejero, 2001. Print.

—. La historia de la espada, el árbol, la piedra y el agua. Guadalajara, México: Ediciones colec-tivo callejero, 1999. Print.

—. La historia de los sueños. Guadalajara, México: Ediciones colectivo callejero, 2001. Print.

—. La historia de los colores. Guadalajara, México: Ediciones colectivo callejero, 1996. Print.

—. The Story of Colors. La Historia de los Colores. Trans. Anne Bar din. El Paso: cinco Puntos Press, 1996. Print.

—. Questions and Swords. Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution. El Paso: cinco Puntos Press, 2001. Print.

Secondary Sourcesderrida, Jacques. Positions. chicago: The Univer-

sity of chicago Press, 1981. Print.Enlace Zapatista. Web. October 7, 2013. Ejército Zapatista de Liberación nacional

(EZLn). Gobierno autónomo I. Cuaderno de texto de primer grado del curso “La libertad según l@s zapatistas. n.p. [2013]. Print.

—. Gobierno autónomo I. Cuaderno de texto de primer grado del curso “La libertad según l@s zapatistas. n.p. [2013]. Print.

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—. Resistencia autónoma. Cuaderno de texto de primer grado del curso de “La libertad según l@s zapatistas. n.p. [2013]. Print.

—. Caracoles y Juntas de Buen Gobierno Zapatistas. Mandar obedeciendo y autonomía. México: Equipo de Apoyo de la comisión IV del EZLn: 2012. Print.

—. Documentos y comunicados 1. México city: Era, 1994. Print.



Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended.” Trans. david Macey. new York: Picador, 2003. Print.

—. “What is Enlightenment?” The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. new York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Print.

—. “nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. new York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Print.

Jackson Albarrán, Elena and Susana Sosenksi (coords.). Nuevas miradas a la historia de la infancia en América Latina: entre prácticas y representaciones. México: Instituto de Inves-tigaciones Históricas (UnAM), 2012. Print.

Ponce de León, Juana ed. Subcomandante Insur-gente Marcos. Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos. new York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. Print.

With this novel Rosalba Guzman confirms that children’s

literature may address challenging topics, such as exclu-

sion, the use of power against the helpless ones, the

subtle and silent struggle of those sentenced to death,

and the solidarity of the underprivileged. The story tells of

animals and people inside a school library, where compli-

cated feelings regarding the death sentence of Julia, the

mouse, are captured with skill. The book’s skillful use of

humor and linguistic diversity unlocks this book’s educa-

tional potential. It is a novel about language, though it still

has engaging characters and situations, risks and solu-

tions, plot and scenery. As well as being an imaginative

space for children, Guzman’s book becomes a platform

for raising awareness of language itself. The mouse is

saved by the power of words, in the seductive fashion

of Scheherazade, by telling tales of the feline realm and

thus wooing the cat, Lindolfo. This tale is a love song to

books and a tribute to the power of words.

Gaby Vallejo Canedo

Rosalba Guzman Soriano

Conquistando a Lindolfo[Wooing Lindolfo]

Bolivia: Editorial Santillana, 2008

120 p.ISBn: 9789990597305(YA novel)

Bo

l i v i a

2008


In Malín Alegría’s Border Town, the first young adult fiction series set on the Mexico-United States border, magical realist moments subvert power relations and reveal that popular beliefs are legitimate forms of knowledge. Magical realist occurrences demonstrate the importance of knowing about Mexican American folklore and folk saints such as bailando con el diablo [dancing with the devil], las lechuzas [bewitched owls], La Llorona [the weeping woman], and la Santa Muerte [Saint Death].

Mag

ical

Rea

list M

omen

ts in

Mal

ín

Ale

gría

’s B

orde

r Tow

n Se

ries


Introduction

Malín Alegría’s Border Town series, published by Scho-lastic in 2012, includes four books targeted to readers age twelve and older: Crossing the Line, Quince Dreams,

Falling Too Fast, and No Second Chances. The first young adult fiction series set on the México-United States border, Border Town portrays border culture through the Garza family in a small town in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas. At culminating moments

in each novel, Alegría includes magical realist moments that inten-sify tension and blur the line between the supernatural and the natural, as inexplicable events occur in the midst of everyday reality. This magical realism shows the importance of knowing about Mexican American folklore and folk saints such as bailando con el diablo [dancing with the devil], las lechuzas [bewitched owls], la Llorona [The Weeping Woman], and la Santa Muerte [Saint death]. Alegría’s implementation of the legends challenges official reli-gious teachings about avoiding unapproved practices and behaving in gender-approved ways. The magical realist elements in Border Town subvert power relations and show that popular beliefs are legitimate forms of knowledge.

Alegría, a Mexican American author who writes culturally specific literature about Mexican American characters, grew up in the mission district of San Francisco, california and now lives in San José. A former elementary teacher, Alegria is recognized for the young adult novels Estrella’s Quinceañera (2006) and Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in México (2007). The favorable reception of her fiction and school visits caused Scholastic Publishing to offer Alegría the Border Town series authorship (kurwa). A precedent for Border Town is the Roosevelt High Series (1994-2009) by Gloria Velásquez, the first Latina author of a young adult series about Latino/a and multiethnic characters. While Velásquez, in books such as Juanita Fights the School Board (1994), emphasizes social problems and combines adolescent with adult narrators, Alegría’s series features more humor and romance, and each book uses the third person point of view to share the perspective of an adolescent narrator in the Garza family. The 2013 International Latino Book Awards recognized the first Border Town book with first place in the category of “Best Youth Latino Focused chapter Book,” and the Spanish edition, Pueblo fronterizo #1: Cruzar el limite, earned second place.

by TIFFANY CANO

by AMY CUMMINS

Tiffany Cano is an English major at the University of Texas Pan American. She was born and raised in the city of Edinburg in the Rio Grande Valley of

Texas.

Dr. Amy Cummins is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas Pan American. She teaches

courses on young adult literature, children’s literature, and pedagogy for

English Language Arts.

At culminating moments in each novel, Alegría includes magical realist moments that intensify tension and blur the line between the supernatural and the natural, as inexplicable events occur in the midst of everyday reality.


MAGIcAL REALIST MOMEnTS In MALín ALEGRíA’S BORdER TOWn SERIES

In Crossing the Line, tenth-grader Fabiola (Fabi) Garza worries when her sister Alexis, a ninth grader at dos Rios High School, dates bully dex Andrews, and Fabi’s cousin Santiago Reyes gets arrested for crimes he did not commit. In Quince Clash, Fabi’s friends involve her in decep-tion to win a competition about whose quinceañera will be better, and a television show records what happens. Falling Too Fast shows how Fabi’s sister, Alexis, grows up through building her school mariachi

group and developing a relationship with a singer who lacks legal documentation to live in the United States. No Second Chances focuses on Santiago, who drops out of his senior year of high school to start a business because his estranged father gets released from prison. The series takes place in the Rio Grande Valley in the fictional small town of dos Rios, Texas, ten miles north of the national border, and thirty miles from McAllen, a city neighboring Reynosa in Tamaulipas.

Magical RealismTextual features that may be classified as magical realism represent an alternate way of understanding the world. Alejo carpentier portrays magical realism, associated primarily with Latin American literature and history, as “the marvelous real” (lo real maravil-loso), in which the marvelous connotes the “extraordi-nary,” or “everything that eludes established norms,” and is inherent in reality (101). According to don Latham, who describes magical realism as presenting “a matter-of-fact world in which the extraordinary exists side by side with the mundane realities of everyday life,” novelists “employ magical realism to question and undermine received notions about the

nature of reality and the social order” (59, 69). Magical realist elements carry this subversive power in the Border Town series.

These inexplicable moments embody what Wendy Faris identifies as one of the magical realist narrative mode’s primary characteristics: “The text contains an ‘irreducible element’ of magic, something we cannot explain according to the laws of the universe as we know them” (167). In the Border Town series, Alegría does not account for or explain away the magical realist moments, which are incorporated into reality; nor does she present them in language marked as different from the rest of the text. Ian Rudge notes in his study of magical realism in chil-dren’s literature that “the magic realist elements are described in the same manner and tone as the realist elements, and they are positioned together in the sole world of the text”; thus, the elements cannot be considered as anything other than an “acceptable, and accepted, part of the realist world” (134, 135).

When magical realism appears in fiction for young adults, it tends to

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permeate an entire text, as in Isabel Allende’s City of the Beasts (2002). In Guadalupe Garcia Mccall’s Summer of the Mariposas (2012), figures such as la Llorona, chupacabras, and lechuzas have physical presence in five sisters’ quest to return a deceased man to his family home in México. Alegría sneaks magical realist moments into a realistic, mass-appeal book series. When magical elements “erupt in, and challenge, the rationalism of realist literary mode,” as Paul Allatson notes, these key moments can suggest “the normative integration of supernatural events and figures into daily existence” (148). This style undermines demarcation between the ordinary and extraordinary, or the rational and irrational, which attests that the inexplicable is intrinsic to reality.

Reading Alegría’s Border Town series helps young adults to develop an appreciation for Mexican American folk legends. Occurrences near the end of all four books heighten tension and create an atmosphere of unknown forces that in some cases help the Garzas in time of need and in other situations act inexplicably. Alegría shows that seemingly super-natural elements defying logical explanation enter routine life. Magical realism as a style acknowledges that popular beliefs are legitimate forms of knowledge. Alegría’s usage incorporates South Texas folk legends and beliefs documented in scholarly books and in fiction for youth, but she adapts them to show women’s power and strength. Young adults thus learn about Mexican American folklore such as la Santa Muerte, bailando con el diablo, las lechuzas, and la Llorona.

La Santa Muerte [Saint Death] Sighting in Crossing the LineThe female Grim Reaper, Santa Muerte is a “Mexican female folk saint who personifies death” and is also called la Santísima Muerte [Most Holy death], la Madrina [the Godmother], la Niña Hermosa [the Beau-tiful Girl], and la Huesuda [the Bony Lady] (chesnut 53). Some people believe she originated as Mictecacíhuatl, the Aztec goddess of death (Vela and Bowles 90; chesnut 28). despite disapproval by the cath-olic church, veneration of la Santa Muerte has become rather public in recent decades (chesnut 37). R. Andrew chesnut explains that la Santa Muerte has adherents in all walks of life, and some people “view devotion to the Bony Lady as either complementary to their catholic faith or even a part of it” (115). La Santa Muerte is asked to help find employment, solve money problems, heal illness, stop addictions, and answer requests both moral and amoral (chesnut 96). She holds appeal for marginalized people outside of or against society, those who seek help with “dark deeds” that they could not voice to other saints (chesnut 96). despite being a “symbol of narcoculture,” the female Grim Reaper receives devotion from “people on opposing sides of the drug war” (chesnut 102, 107).

The role of la Santa Muerte as a defender of good appears near the conclusion when she manifests in a historic cemetery. Alexis is forcibly restrained by friends of dex, her ex-boyfriend, who is enraged that she was recording their conversation in order to expose dex’s crimes against chuy and other undocumented residents. Fabi’s friends, Georgia Rae



Because la Santa Muerta helps protect the young chicanas from men trying to exploit them, the straightforward depiction of her appearance makes the moment of magical realism powerful. Alexis and Fabi bond through this experience, for “‘The Santa Muerte sighting,’ as it would hence-forth be referred to in local folklore, united the sisters like never before” (169). Alegría’s favor-able invocation of Santa Muerte undermines offi-cial catholic teachings and is surprising because the saint is so divisive. This favorable portrayal of Godmother death is emblematic of Alegría’s effort to present the border in a new light, where things are not what they seem, and media stereo-types about border zones get complicated.

Bailando con el Diablo [Dancing with the Devil] in Quince Clashdancing with the devil [Bailando con el Diablo] is a classic folk legend ending with the young woman’s death, disappearance, or punish-ment. Its resonance in south Texas is verified by the presence of 400 variations of the tale in

and Milo, who helped plan the scheme to clear Santiago’s name as the accused criminal, try to find a way to free Alexis. Fabi says a quick prayer to her long-dead relative buried in the cemetery, seeking support “to protect her and her friends from any evil spirits and mean football players” (162). Then Fabi bravely leaps out from behind a gravestone, shouting and wielding a chunk of concrete in order to intimidate the aggres-sors. The two young men restraining Alexis are surprised, especially because “a second figure in glowing gray appeared from the darkness and lurched at them with a long white sickle” (166). This description matches the description of la Santa Muerte in Mexican Bestiary by south Texas artist noé Vela and author david Bowles (89). The young men scream and flee, soon followed by dex, who stares, “stunned, as the ghostly figure dissipated before his eyes” (166). All witness the apparition as a literal occurrence.

La Santa Muerte comes to the Garzas’ aid in a time of need, protecting innocent young women against antagonists. Fabi does not deliberately activate her protection. The saint seems to be drawn by the political undercurrent of the situa-tion and Fabi’s sincere need to protect her sister in the setting of a graveyard containing tombstones from when south Texas was part of México. Alegría creates a linkage between historical land appropriation and the villainous dex, who is Anglo and not Mexican in heritage, and whose grandfather is an influential judge. The chapter ends with Georgia Rae’s and Milo’s verifying that they were not responsible and Alexis’s voicing what she and Fabi saw: “la Santa Muerte” (167). Alegría lets the incident remain mysterious, but dex does get punished for his thefts and violence

against undocumented immigrants. Alegría thus challenges power dynamics and shows Mexican Americans standing up to protect themselves.

Alegría thus challenges power dynamics and shows Mexican

Americans standing up to protect themselves.

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through a glass window. Although the drop is “at least three stories,” there is no sign of Orlando outside, for “it was as if he just disappeared into the night” (176). Abuelita Alpha believes that she has delivered Fabi from mortal danger. She makes the sign of the cross in front of her grand-daughter and states, “He was the devil” (176). Alpha justifies throwing Orlando out by saying that he had the feet of el Diablo and that Fabi was not being twirled by a great dancer but was “spinning above the floor in the air. If I didn’t break the spell, he would have spirited you away into hell” (179).

In Alegría’s retelling of the legend, no one dies or gets set on fire. The party resumes calmly, as guests return to dancing. The final chapter of Quince Clash opens with the pronounce-ment: “That night became known as the night Fabi danced with the devil” (180). When Fabi and Santiago return to the dance hall the next day, they look for signs of Orlando’s leap. At the bottom of the three-story drop, they see the distinctive prints in the dirt—one like a hoof-print and the other like a chicken foot (183). Fabi wonders, “could Orlando really be the devil?” (183). The mystery is accepted, with no rational explanation needed. Fabi, like Trini, escapes the punishment associated with dancing with the devil.

Alegría subverts the legend’s didactic message of urging humility and deference to parental and church authority. Official religious teaching gets challenged by the contrasting beliefs of Trini and Alpha: one grandmother willfully invites the devil to a party honoring a sanctioned rite of passage in a woman’s life, while the other ejects him from the party. Alegría’s usage of this legend differs from what folklorist Rafaelo castro identifies as its traditional meaning of warning young people, particularly girls, that “one must not disobey one’s parents” (castro 15). Alegría acknowledges loving family ties in a more egali-tarian, contemporary way. Quince Clash demon-strates a series theme of Garza family affection and unconditional love, shown through good and bad times by parents, grandparents, siblings, and primos [cousins]. The legend unites the family through shared storytelling. This incident is

the contemporary legends section of the Border Studies archive at University of Texas Pan Amer-ican in Hidalgo county. René Saldaña, Jr., an author for young readers who was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, retells it as the title story of his collection of traditional tales, Dancing with the Devil and Other Tales from Beyond (2012). In a version by another Valley native, Xavier Garza, the woman who has wronged someone dies in a dance hall fire after the handsome dancer turns back into the devil, complete with telltale feet: “One was the foot of a chicken and the other that of a goat” (“Handsome” 52). But while the original intention of the story warns young women to follow parental expectations such as behaving demurely and not dancing on sacred days (Madrid 18), Alegría turns the legend into celebrating young women’s freedom.

Alegría foreshadows the diabolical guest at the botánica Grandma Trinidad and Fabi visit. Botánicas are “urban storefront healing centers,” shops associated with alternative medical and spiritual practices (León 157). Although the offi-cial catholic catechism disavows spiritual consul-tations that could be considered occult, they are part of popular catholicism in some communi-ties, and Alegría depicts multiple consultations in botánicas. In Quince Clash, while Grandma Trinidad (Trini) consults with a spiritualist who helped her in the past, Fabi sees a wooden statue of the devil with “a rooster claw for one foot and a goat hoof for the other” (Quince 147). The devil physically manifests as a character in the book’s climactic moment at Fabi’s party for her quincea-ñera. The portrayal of Orlando Russo matches traditional versions of the leyenda [legend] in which the stranger is “strikingly handsome, muy suave [smooth and poised], tall, and refined” (castro 15). Trini says of Orlando, “He’s an old friend of mine” whom she invited because “Fabi needed a handsome chambelán” to be her special date (174). Grandma Trini has claimed to “dance with the devil and live to tell about it” (112).

Abuelita Alpha, the other grandmother, who is more conservative, perceives Orlando as a fatal threat to her granddaughter. Alpha beats at him with a straw broom and chases Orlando to the window, where he blows a kiss then leaps



recalled in the third book, Falling Too Fast: “The last time Fabi listened to Grandma Trini, she ended up dancing at her quinceañera with a hand-some stranger who everyone swore was the devil” (80). It will be a story Fabi may one day tell her own descendants.

La Lechuza [the Bewitched Owl] in Falling Too FastFolklore animates the third book in the Border Town series through the appearance of la lechuza, the bewitched owl, who shadows Alexis Garza. La lechuza, a woman who metamorphoses into an owl is a popular tale in the Texas borderlands. As Vela and Bowles say, “Ask nearly anyone in México or south Texas, and they’ll tell you the same thing: many of the screech owls flit-ting about at night are actually witches who’ve transformed themselves into these birds to cause trouble of one sort or another” (152). A lechuza, who may be a harbinger of death or bad news, is sometimes associated with brujería [witchcraft] (castro 26).

La lechuza appears regularly with varying degrees of good and evil in stories for younger readers by Tejano/a authors. Xavier Garza’s story collections show how bewitched owls, along with brujas [witches], can be forces either for evil (“Las Lechuzas,” “Witch Owl”), or for good (“Lechuza Lady,” Zulema). Las lechuzas in Garcia’s Mccall’s Summer of the Mariposas are “malevolent witches” who are “aggressive” and “terrifying” in their seemingly motiveless malignity (202, 203). Yet in Saldaña’s The Lemon Tree Caper (2011), Señorita Andrade transforms into her owl form in order to bring justice against thieves.

In Alegría’s Falling Too Fast, the lechuza has unclear motives and appears at the start of the book, in the middle, and near the end. When Alexis encounters the owner of the botánica, Alexis has a presentimiento [foreboding]: “Her favorite stories were of La Lechuza, a woman who sold her soul to the devil and could trans-form into a screech owl at night. Alexis shivered; maybe she was looking at the real Lechuza” (3). The shop owner takes a dislike to Alexis due to sensing disrespect and doubt from Alexis and her friend nikki, who are buying candles and

seeking love charms. Alexis receives a prediction but assumes the shop owner is “playing a part” to sell products (6).

contradicting empirical science, the love charms Alexis tries appear to work—or maybe her creative methods of pursuit deserve the credit—for she begins a relationship with the handsome mariachi singer christian Luna. The middle lechuza encounter occurs at a fancy restaurant where christian takes Alexis on a date. Alexis perceives they are under surveillance by la lechuza. When Alexis sees the woman from the botánica, Alexis identifies her as “La Bruja!” [the witch] (120). When the woman disappears into thin air, Alexis feels a “cool wind,” hears the call of an owl, and wonders, “Old women who turn into owls don’t really exist—right?” (122). The legend returns near the end to terrify her school mariachi group during an overnight bus trip to a performance in north Texas (166). The bus stalls, and telltale tapping on the window begins the attack by “a huge birdlike creature” (165). The teacher, driver, and students panic. As mentioned in Garza’s version (“Las Lechuzas” 16), Alegría includes the ritual of defense by tying then untying notes on a rope while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Alexis’s bandmate Justin performs this ritual while explaining that he learned it from his grandmother (Falling 167). Alexis senses that the creature dislikes her, and “its yellow eyes reminded her of the ones she’d seen from the restaurant patio” (169). Alexis hits the gigantic owl with a stone from Santiago’s slingshot, and when it falls to the ground, the bus engines roar back to life, the radio blaring “Ring of Fire” (169). The mariachi group continues on its trip, and the novel returns to its dominant mode of straightforward realism. The students accept that a strange thing occurred. Alegría’s portrayal corresponds with how Faris character-izes magical realism in fiction: “The magic cannot usually be explained away as individual or even as collective hallucination or invention” (183).

The witch owl foretells doom for Alexis’s romantic relationship and christian’s college dreams. An undocumented Texas resident, christian lacks legal authorization to live or work in the United States. Alegría, concerned about

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vulnerable young adults affected by immigra-tion policies, made deportation a central conflict in Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in México (cummins 63). Immigration law is likewise an antagonistic force in Falling Too Fast. Appre-hended when authorities raid an illegal drag race he attends, christian gets deported, forfeiting his chance for a scholarship and university admis-sion. Alexis loses her first love due to immi-gration laws. The experience politicizes Alexis, who begins volunteering at a legal aid center and “talking about being a lawyer” in order to improve the system (No Second Chances 22). As in Crossing the Line, when chuy gets exploited by the villainous dex, Alegría shows that Mexican American communities are at risk because of the current social and legal conditions of undocu-mented residents.

La Llorona [the Weeping Woman] in No Second ChancesLuis León notes that the story of la Llorona, about a woman who has lost a child or children, usually by her own hand, gets retold “as a vehicle

for women to narrate the order of the world” (8). Oral and written narratives offer “numerous vari-ations of her motivations and culpability” (León 10). Rafaelo castro describes how “la Llorona is condemned to wander for eternity, crying and repenting, searching for her lost children” (141). Observers see that “she always appears late at night, and her sobbing can be vividly heard as she shrieks, ‘Ayyy, mis hijos!’” [Ayyy, my children!] (castro 140). While the sorrowing woman can be a frightening personage (Garza, “Llorona 9-1-1”), some recent books for youth favorably portray her as helpful to female protagonists (Anzaldúa, Garcia Mccall). This classic image appears in No Second Chances to lament the sadness of family suffering and separation.

Santiago’s self-centered perspective on his life changes after he befriends Angel, a young boy who steals vegetables because he and his siblings lack food. When Santiago’s ex-girlfriend, the daughter of a drug trafficker, ruins the smoothie stand Santiago runs with the Garza sisters, Santiago realizes a connection between the selfish way criminals see the world and the reality that others suffer desperate need. As the ex-girlfriend screams at Santiago to love her, Alexis remarks, “That was crazy. Talk about a Llorona” (137). The comment foreshadows an uncanny incident: Santiago and his cousin chubs hear the plain-tive cry of la Llorona voicing the misery of family disintegration. Santiago has shown compassion to the man who stole his truck because he realizes it is Angel’s father, and he does not want Angel to grow up fatherless. When Santiago takes the man to his home, he hears “a bone-chilling cry that made him stiffen with fear. ‘Ay, mis hijos, mis hijos,’ the pained female voice cried into the whistling wind. ‘¿Dónde están mis hijos?’” (176). The message raises the possibility that Angel and his siblings could die of neglect. Santiago and chubs are “thinking the same thing: La Llorona! The heart-wrenching howls of a grieving mother were carried swiftly on the breeze and seemed to be coming from all directions” (176). The young men do not doubt what they hear.

The Llorona legend applies to Angel’s family which has been torn apart by poverty, alco-holism, and crime. Law enforcement officers are



at Angel’s home because a neighbor alerted authorities after hearing cries and discovering “there was no food in the house and the mom was passed out on the floor” (178). Police take away Angel’s mother, who appears to have made choices devastating to her children, but Alegría does not assign culpability. Angel’s father runs away into the night, deserting his family. The laments also relate to Santiago’s relationship with his mother, consuelo, and his estranged father, Eddie. Eddie accepts blame for a crime he did not commit in order to keep Santiago and his cousin out of jail. This action, which gives him a second chance at redemption in Santiago’s eyes, keeps his own family apart. Because Santiago’s sympathetic mother consuelo, who has been raising their son on her own without Eddie, is the social worker at Angel’s home, the ending offers signs of hope for their families. consuelo’s stable influence can help to heal both of the families. nevertheless, the haunting lament of the wailing woman reminds readers how much heartbreak is caused by family separations, mistakes, and poverty.

ConclusionAlegría’s usage of magical realist moments in her realistic Border Town series acknowledges the importance of folklore and legends through blurring the line between fantasy and realism, or the supernatural and the natural, as literary genres and in lived experiences. Instances

in Border Town include watching la Santa Muerte appear protectively, hearing the wails of la Llorona, being followed by la Lechuza, and dancing with el Diablo. These uncanny incidents heighten narrative tension and create an atmo-sphere of unknown forces that variously observe, help, or participate in Garza family life. Most of the magical elements in Border Town involve powerful women in some shape or form who may not be nice but possess strength and influ-ence. Representing popular catholicism on the border, the folklore usage challenges conven-tional religious teachings that require adherents to eschew unapproved spiritual practices and to behave in gender-approved ways. Alegría cele-brates women’s freedoms to act in a contempo-

rary milieu that is both dangerous and liberating.The magical realist moments convey a sense of the south Texas

borderlands as a complex place that is culturally rich. Experience suggests that the magical realist elements in Malín Alegría’s books become an impetus for readers’ family conversations and online searches to find information about legends that are unfamiliar. Alegría’s cultur-ally specific use of Mexican American folklore, along with her inclusion of Spanish and allusions to history, show that this knowledge is worth possessing, and dos Rios is a border town worth visiting.

These uncanny incidents heighten narrative tension and create an

atmosphere of unknown forces that variously observe, help, or

participate in Garza family life. Most of the magical elements in Border Town involve powerful

women in some shape or form who may not be nice but possess strength

and influence.

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AcknowledgementThe authors acknowledge the support of dr. Stephanie Alvarez and the

Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Texas Pan American.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksAlegría, Malín. Crossing the Line. new York: Point/Scholastic, 2012.

Print.—. Estrella’s Quinceañera. new York: Simon Pulse, 2006. Print.—. Falling Too Fast. new York: Point/Scholastic, 2012. Print.—. No Second Chances. new York: Point/Scholastic, 2012. Print.—. Pueblo fronterizo #1: Cruzar el límite. Trans. Joaquín Badajoz. new

York: Point/Scholastic, 2012. Print.—. Quince Clash. new York: Point/Scholastic, 2012. Print.—. Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in México. new York: Simon

Pulse, 2007. Print.Allende, Isabel. City of the Beasts / La Ciudad de las bestias. Trans.

Margaret Sayes Peden. Harper collins, 2002. Print.Anzaldúa, Gloria. Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y la Llorona.

Ill. consuela Mendez. San Francisco: children’s Book Press, 1995. Print.

Garcia Mccall, Guadalupe. Summer of the Mariposas. new York: Tu / Lee and Low Books, 2012. Print.

Garza, Xavier. “The Handsome Stranger.” Creepy Creatures and Other Cucuys. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2004. 48-52. Print.

—. “Lechuza Lady.” Creepy Creatures and Other Cucuys. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2004. 18-21. Print.

—. “Las Lechuzas versus El Curandero.” Creepy Creatures and Other Cucuys. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2004. 12-17. Print.

—. “Llorona 9-1-1.” Kid Cyclone Fights the Devil / Kid Ciclón se Enfrenta a el Diablos y Otras Historias. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2010. 26-31. Print.

—. “The Witch Owl.” Kid Cyclone Fights the Devil / Kid Ciclón se Enfrenta a el Diablos y Otras Historias. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2010. 7-13. Print.

—. Zulema and the Witch Owl / Zulema y la Bruja Lechuza. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2009. Print.

Saldaña, René, Jr. “dancing with the devil.” Dancing with the Devil and Other Tales from Beyond / Bailando con el Diablo y Otros Cuentos del Más Allá. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2012. 23-40. Print.

—. The Lemon Tree Caper, a Mickey Rangel Mystery / La Intriga del Limonero, Collección Mickey Rangel, Detective Privado. Houston: Piñata Books / Arte Público, 2012. Print.

Velásquez, Gloria. Juanita Fights the School Board. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1994. Print.



Secondary SourcesAllatson, Paul. Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural

and Literary Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Print.

Border Studies Archive. University of Texas Pan American. Web. 5 May 2014.

carpentier, Alejo. “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real.” 1975. Trans. Tanya Huntington and Lois Parkinson Zamora. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Eds. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy Faris. durham: duke UP, 1995. 89-108. Print.

castro, Rafaelo G. Chicano Folklore: A Guide to the Folktales, Traditions, Rituals, and Religious Practices of Mexican Americans. new York: Oxford UP, 2001.

chesnut, R. Andrew. Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint. new York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

cummins, Amy. “Border crossings: Undocu-mented Migration Between México and the United States in contemporary Young Adult Literature.” Children’s Literature in Education 44.1 (March 2013): 57-73. Print.

Faris, Wendy. “Scheherazade’s children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Eds. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy Faris. durham: duke UP, 1995. 163-190. Print.

kurwa, nishat. “Author Malín Alegría Builds on ‘Estrella’s’ Star Power.” national Public Radio. 18 October 2011. Web. 10 October 2013.

Latham, don. “The cultural Work of Magic Realism in Three Young Adult novels.” Children’s

Literature in Education 38.1 (March 2007): 59-70. Print.

Latino Literacy now. International Latino Book Awards. 30 May 2013. Web. 5 May 2014.

León, Luis d. La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-Mexican Border-lands. Berkeley: U of california P, 2004. Print.

Madrid, Michael. “dancing with the devil and Other Stories My Mother Told Me.” Associa-tion of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal 3.1 (2009): 15-20. Print.

Rudge, Ian. “Magic Realism in children’s Litera-ture: A narratological Reading.” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship 10.2 (2004): 127-140. Print.

Vela, noé, and david Bowles. Mexican Bestiary / Bestiario Mexicano. donna, TX: VAO Publishing, 2012. Print.


Based on tradition and doctrine we interpret identity as those [created] “spoken portraits.” Portraits, because they circulate through images; spoken because they are in permanent construction, and spoken portraits because they are constructed not as photographs but as an interpretative and imaginative effort. (Güell 75)

This paper analyzes images of aboriginality created in Chilean narratives for children, and argues that these images try to instill contemporary ideas of national identity. The books Tres Príncipes [Three Princes] (1994) and Flora, Cuentos Andinos [Flora, Andean tales] (2008) are closely examined, showing how cultural practices and geographical motifs drive the renovated, post-dictatorship discourses of Chilean identity.

Chilean Children’s Literature and National

Identity: Post-Dictatorship Discourses of Chileanness Built through the Representation of Indigenous People


by ISABEL IBACETA

Isabel Ibaceta graduated from the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana

de Chile and then earned an MA in Children's Literature at Roehampton

University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Chilean and Hispanic

American Literature at Universidad de Chile. Together with colleagues she created in 2013 the first center for

research in children’s literature in Chile.

Introduction

chile is a South American country colonized by Spain in 1540. It gained political independence in 1818. At the time of colonization, eighteen ethnic groups inhabited the chilean

territory (Villalobos), ten of which are currently extinct. Histori-cally there has been political conflict between the colonizer and the native cultures. In chilean children’s literature, images of native cultures have been constructed from an early date, with increasing frequency from 1990 onwards. I argue here that the growth of chil-dren’s literature featuring indigenous peoples is linked to the emer-gence of new national identity discourses in chile, which appeared after the sixteen-year dictatorship ended in 1989. The regime of General Augusto Pinochet—borne out of a military coup that had dethroned a legally elected Marxist government—had neolib-eral intentions and systematically—and horrifically—violated the human rights of Pinochet’s opponents.

This article employs contemporary sociological perspectives that understand national identity as a discursive production molded by diverse political, cultural, and economic elements, and not as a tangible phenomenon (Bhabha 292; Larraín 40). Imagologists, such as Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, state that national identity is a social convention articulated through the use of language (22). They agree with Homi Bhabha’s idea of the nation as a narration, as a cultural elaboration made up of poetic, political, and picto-rial discourses, among others (14-15). These discursive creations are also “prone to subjective and personal perspective, and are thus not ‘revealed realities’ but imaginative socially accepted recreations of intangible experiences” (Sandis 26). In what follows, some tenets of imagology are described, after which a brief characterization of the construction of indigeneity in chilean children’s literature is presented. Saúl Schkolnic’s Tres principles [Three Principles] and Ana María Pavez’s and constanza Recart’s Flora are then analyzed to demonstrate how the configurations of “culture-heritage” and “geography-landscape” in narratives help to form contemporary national identity discourses in post-dictatorship chile.

Imagological PrinciplesSince imagologists understand national characterizations as the product of a discursive praxis and not as concrete attributes, they study this praxis and not the presumed “real” national quali-ties (Beller and Leerssen 27). Taking on this principle, this paper deals with discourses of aboriginality and not with empirical native groups. Imagological explorations also work to analyze the literary construction that one nation—“auto-nation”—makes of another nation—“hetero-nation.” This construction implies the creation of “auto-images” and “hetero-images.” A hetero-image is the molding of a discourse about a culture of which the writer is not or does not feel he or she belongs. consequently, the structuring

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cHILEAn cHILdREn’S LITERATURE And nATIOnAL IdEnTITY

of an auto-image implies someone writing about a culture to which she or he belongs (Beller and Leerssen 17-30, 343). chileans produce hetero-images of native people; while many chileans have a biological native lineage, culturally they have almost no relationship with the social, economic, intellectual, or ideological elements coming from first nations. Although first peoples are legally chilean citizens, they recog-nize themselves as coming from different nations, reflecting an opposi-tion to past and prevailing chilean economic and social systems.

Another imagological outlook states that, in the exploration of literary hetero-images, the national allegiance of the one creating hetero-images is a key aspect (27). The authors of the narratives examined in this paper are not indig-enous people but chileans, since none of them has either a direct native ancestry or shares a cultural background with an aboriginal group. Additionally, similarly to what happens in other countries, “political power, educational achieve-ment, and access to opportunities for publishing have been on the side of the colonizers” (Bradford, Unsettling Narratives 9). Making the distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous people is nonethe-less a complex issue in a nation with five hundred years of racial mixing processes. Labeling is a political and polemical practice, as Alan knight explains (73). The figures about who belongs to a native group might vary depending on the factor—language, cultural allegiance, census data—used to classify the inhabitants.

Following imagological perspectives, the implied audience for these texts is also taken into account (Beller and Leerssen 28). The audience is identified as chilean children in general, and not necessarily chil-dren from indigenous populations. This can be inferred from the idea present in the texts that, for chilean children to adequately develop, it is important to know about their country’s past. For people arrogating a native allegiance, indigenous cultural practices are certainly not a “thing of the past.” Finally, according to Beller and Leerssen, the depiction of the auto-image is essential when analyzing the construction of the other (29). The present paper is at heart an examination of discourses of the contemporary chilean auto-nation, which is composed through the construction of idealized indigenous hetero-nations whose mythical greatness is believed to be an essential element of chileans’ nature.

Literary Characterizations of Indigenous Cultures in Chilean Children’s Narratives (1990-2010)The presence of indigenous characters in chilean children’s literature appears in the early twentieth century.1 Some examples can be found in La Ciudad de los Césares [The city of the caesars] (1936), El Último grumete de La Baquedano [The Last Boy in the Baquedano] (1941), Orejones y Viracochas: Diego de Almagro [dried Apricots and Viracochas: diego de Almagro] (1943), and in Papelucho historiador [Papelucho

Although first peoples are legally Chilean citizens, they recognize themselves as coming from different nations, reflecting an opposition to past and prevailing Chilean economic and social systems.



Historian] (1955). This topic shows a clear increase in the last two decades, from 1990 to 2010. I have identified sixty-two chilean chil-dren’s texts that deal with native cultures; fifty-eight of them were published after 1989, the last year of dictatorship in chile (Ibaceta 2010). I have conducted a reading of the twenty-five books from this study that were accessible, and concluded that all twenty-five were concerned with national or cultural identity issues.2 The main underlying themes used to disseminate these issues were ecology, preservation-diffusion of the native heritage, multiculturalism, and the process of growing up. Among these four subjects, ecology and the preservation-diffu-sion of native heritage were the most recurrent themes in children’s narratives written between 1990 and 2010. Given the preeminence of these subjects, Tres príncipes [Three Princes] and Flora will be examined through the use of two related “national Identity Analysis Tool” categories: “Geography and Landscape” and “culture and Heritage” (Sandis 176-197). The nIAT is an instrument created to categorize and analyze narrative elements used in children’s literature to create images of nation.

Tres príncipes and Flora were chosen because they are representative of the two decades this work deals with, and also because they were published by different editorial houses and written by different authors of different genders. Tres príncipes is a historical novel set at the begin-ning of the sixteenth century, when an important part of the west side of South America was under the control of the Inca Empire. This is the story of an Atacameño teenager, Antai, who goes on a journey to become part of an Inca school for elite young natives. during this journey, a sort of tour of most of the northern current chilean territory is presented, showing the multicultural richness of the native groups that inhabit these places. Flora is the story of a contemporary chilean girl who travels to different regions of the country. Her journey is mapped in a book Flora’s grand-mother left her. Each place Flora visits is related to a legend and to a specific native plant. The girl learns about traditional native species while she is introduced to the values and beliefs of various

indigenous groups.The authors of these two books belong to

instructed social classes. Schkolnik, author of Tres príncipes, is an architect and a science philos-opher, who began writing books on this subject in 1980. The writers of Flora, Pavez and Recart, are also well educated; Pavéz is an economist and master in archeology, and Recart is a child psychiatrist. Pavéz and Recart published their first book based on the cultures of indigenous groups, Kiwala conoce el mar [kiwala knows the Sea], in 2001. Given the success of Kiwala conoce el mar, the authors created a children’s editorial house, Amanuta, focused on the diffusion of indigenous peoples’ heritage, in 2002.

children’s books on indigenous roots were in high demanded by the educational sector. As a result, the mentioned authors—and many others—went on publishing extensively on this subject. Prior to the decade of 1990, the presence of natives in children’s history and textbooks was minimal, as has been shown in the research of Leonardo Piña. For this reason, the high produc-tion of children’s texts about aboriginal peoples supplies what “history has not been sufficiently generous to supply of its own accord” (Stevenson 27). Therefore, it is not a coincidence that many of these post-1990 texts are connected with history by depicting elements of culture and heritage.

Culture and Heritage in the Construc-tion of National IdentityOne of the main components used to create a sense of national or cultural allegiance in narra-tive texts for children is “culture and heritage.” This element refers to “activities and materials which make up an inherent part of culture and are drawn from tradition and history” (Sandis 198). Habits, traditional social practices, customs, folkloric elements, and rituals are some of the components comprising this nIAT cate-gory. Five subcategories are proposed: myth and legend, tradition and superstition, forms of arts and cultural artifacts, music and dance, and food and drink. In what follows, the focus will be on the first subcategory, myth and legend.

Tres príncipes and Flora are focused on spreading the values of Atacameño and Mapuche cultures

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respectively, mainly by rescuing their legends and myths.3 As Joseph campbell (209) and Beller and Leerssen indicate (375), myths are used by past and current societies to deal with their histor-ical needs and worries. Thus, “the references to [these traditional narrations] transfer ideological notions … to the new literary text and aid in the construction of the literary national images” (Sandis 199). Myths and legends in Tres príncipes depict Atacameño and other northern groups’ cultural practices, such as languages, architec-ture, traditional dishes, clothing, music and rites. These elements are disseminated in the book

through the action of storytelling. Antai, as well as other characters he meets during his journey, narrate myths related to their cultures. These different native groups are invested with a sense of identity through depictions of their ways of living, physical appearance, traditional clothing and the characteristic places they inhabit, such as the mountains, beach, and desert. Flora retells eight legends—which are embedded in Flora’s story—related to eight different native species of flora. These native plants work as introduc-tory imagery that opens up the cultural world of each native group depicted. Thus, Flora is intro-duced to native ceremonies, goods, and prayers, and to social agents such as the Machi, Mapuche female traditional doctor, as well as to native clothing depicted in the illustrations, and food. As elements of landscape, plants metaphori-cally imply a territorial and, as a consequence, a “cultural allegiance”; plants are components of symbolic landscapes that become cultural myths, which are “part of the iconography of nation-hood, part of the shared set of ideas[,] memo-ries and feelings which bind a people together” (devine-Wright and Lyons 35).

In both Tres príncipes and Flora, it is implicit in the first text and explicit in the second, that the elements comprised of native groups’ cultural particularities are a crucial part of our country’s heritage and past. The narrative strategy to convey this depiction in Tres príncipes, entails choosing and structuring myths and legends set in places and related to economic and cultural activities that were important for pre-Hispanic inhabit-ants, but that are still central to chilean culture and economy. In Flora, while the narrative voice describes indigenous stories, the journey of the girl emphasizes landscape and climate varia-tions according to the different regions she passes through, and a pedagogic strategy commonly used by schools to teach the history and geog-raphy of chile is evident. The narrative artifact of the journey helps readers to learn about the history of places inhabited by aboriginals, but also allows them to recognize and to symbolically unite today’s diverse chilean regions. Overall, it is possible to see the strong relationship between the cultural and geographical nIAT categories. kathryn James emphasizes the fact that although literary landscapes are tractable entities, they are also “constructs of culture, and are accordingly attributed meaning by the various ways they are represented and interpreted” (12)

Geography and Landscape in the Construction of National IdentityBeller and Leerssen show the close link between identity issues and places through a consider-ation of European literature from the pre-French Revolution period until the late twentieth century (412-414). This interconnection is also studied by social psychologists. They developed a line of research called “place-identity,” which makes manifest the relevance that rhetorical dynamics have in giving form to ideas of identity, and also the political implications of representing places and positioning people and groups within them (dixon and durrheim 28). The centrality of place in nation-building discourses helps to explain, in part, the recurrence of place as a theme in chilean children’s texts addressing national identity. In the narratives examined here, loca-tions and idiosyncratic natural landmarks are

Myths and legends in Tres príncipes depict Atacameño and other northern groups’ cultural practices, such as languages, architecture, traditional dishes, clothing, music and rites.



symbols representing the foundation of specific ethnic groups and the place of origin of traditional cultural practices, which nonetheless have a clear relevance for today’s chilean society.

In Tres príncipes and Flora, myths and legends are rooted in specific geographic locations and geophysical features. These texts depict land-marks such as mines, regional volcanoes, mountains, rivers, and towns. In Flora the various landscape elements, such as climate, native plant species, and rivers, are used to generate an image of the Mapuche culture. Then, similar elements are used to convey the idea that these images are an inherent part of chilean national identity. In the legend of the Arau-caria tree, a story embedded in Flora’s journey, for example, it is not explicitly said that she is entering Mapuche territory, but the selection of physical landmarks shows it instead: “Flora went on towards the south of Chile … She arrived in Los Ángeles city, and from there she climbed

the mountains following the bed of the Bío-Bío River. Gigantic araucarias appeared everywhere” [emphasis added] (7). The italicized terms function as immediate material connectors and representations of the Mapuche culture for almost any chilean reader. Original Mapuche settlements are located in the south, near Los Ángeles city, and the Bío-Bío has been a historical, political and strategic natural border of high relevance in the context of Spanish/chilean and Mapuche conflicts since the period of the conquest. Also, araucaria trees are one of the most distinctive Mapuche emblems.

Landscape and geography in Tres príncipes are key elements that the implied author of each story uses to convey the value of the cultural heritage of the Atacameños and other ethnic groups. Several myths in Tres príncipes are related to the genesis of important places or characteristic geographical features. One of the stories narrates how a fertile region became a dry place. In the story, an angry sorcerer burnt a lake on a high Andean plateau, which was an important source of water for major regional rivers. This caused the Atacama desert and the Atacama Salar Flat to appear (33-41). These physical

features are very characteristic of the north of chile, and their climatic and geophysical conditions have shaped the cultural and economic life of the current chilean region of Atacama. This desert, among other geophysical conditions, has been crucial to the molding of discourses about regional identity for inhabitants of this sector, from pre-Hispanic times till the present day, as Lautaro núñez discusses (166-67). Thus, through the construction of such a geographical and mythical genesis as this, legendary icons of national belonging are displayed, becoming, in the words of Bhabha, a sort of “creative humanization … which trans-forms a part of terrestrial space into a place of historical life for people” (67). The Atacama Salar Flat and the Araucaria Tree legends are only some of the many examples of how native groups’ allegiance to place is

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used in these texts to address chilean identity issues. In what follows, I offer arguments stating why these books comprise post-dictatorship discourses.

“Culture and Heritage” and “Geography and Landscape”In Flora, through the way the story and illustrations are presented, it is clear that the cultural particularities portrayed by the literary construction of ethnic groups are used mostly to praise diversity and multiculturalism, rather than to emphasize the cultural value of such groups. In Tres príncipes, heterogeneity and intercultural cooperation are prized, showing, for example, good relationships, and even intercul-tural marriages between couples of dissimilar social status and different ethnic communities, such as the Atacameños, Aymaras, and Incas. This valuation of difference can be regarded as a renovated nation-building discourse since, as Sofia correa argues, chilean political and histori-cist constructions of national identity have been—from the arrival of the Spaniards, and also during the nineteenth and twentieth centu-ries—grounded in social order, catholic ideologies, in an authoritarian politics (17), and in a racial essentialism (Larraín 142). This approach was also present in Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship that attempted to destroy any form of ideological dissent in the name of creating a sense of national unity (correa 15-23). Thus, previous conceptions of national identity were mostly grounded in homogeneity. As Edward Said points out, the verbal construction of the national soul is a mode of subor-dinating and imposing cultural ideas about a group of people (qtd. in Bhabha 14). national identity discursive creations in chile, from the sixteenth century until some decades ago, have imposed a sense of unity by negating aboriginality, through the idea that chileans were not natives, but a perfect mix of European with some elements coming from the positive characteristics of the first people.

Elements of “Geography and Landscape” are seen throughout Flora’s story in the attempt to disseminate the natural heritage of diverse ethnic groups. nonetheless, this heritage is utilized to structure a major element identity that comprises all that diversity in one space: Chile. One example of this strategy is the use of the iconic Andes Mountains, a natural eastern boundary of the chilean territory. This landmark serves here to unify chilean diversity, for it crosses all the national territory from north to south, encompassing all the very culturally and geograph-ically dissimilar regions of the country. Another element of landscape used to generate an idea of chileanness is the native plant on the book cover: the copihue. This plant is recognized by almost any chilean reader as a common symbol of chilean identity. Thus, although the book highlights geographical, botanical and cultural diversity represented by native groups, the conservative icons of chileanness (national flower and Andes Mountains) are the ones that stand above all heterogeneity, attempting a sort of unification.

Further evidence showing that Flora is concerned with contemporary chilean national identity can be found in the fact that indigeneity is



used to spread themes of current global interest, such as environmentalism. From the book’s peri-textual information we read “Throughout [this] reading [children will be able to] enjoy, value and respect the world that surrounds them.” In addition, there are lines such as this: “Flora understood that her grandmother had left her the mission of protecting nature […]”(15). These examples demonstrate the implied authors’ interest to contribute to the shaping of a self-aware average contemporary chilean citizen, rather than addressing native children.

In Tres príncipes geographic and land-scape references, which serve to disseminate Atacameño and other native cultures, can also be interpreted as featuring a sense of contem-porary chilean identity. Most contemporary readers are able to notice the relevance that the Atacama desert and the Atacama Salar flat have today. These places are important sources of national income, as well as known and promoted tourist attractions. By teaching about native geographic settlements, the novel also implic-itly draws attention to the fact that we inhabit these same spaces in the present and that these locations belong to us today. For this reason, it is implied in the narrative that children should become acquainted with Atacameño’s cultural heritage as well as with their historical settle-ments. It is important to clarify that although the narrators of Flora and Tres príncipes finally also construct a kind of unity out of the motifs of cultural and native heterogeneity, they do so by giving a positive vision of diversity, positioning it as an element that actually constitutes us as a nation. This is a foundational nation-building discourse that separates itself from previous ideas of the nation for implicit child readers, that clung to military and religious values, as is the case in El último grumete de la Baquedano, for example.

From the reading of these texts two questions emerge. Firstly, why do post-dictatorship chil-dren’s narratives insistently work around ideas of national identity? An answer is that after the end of dictatorship in 1989, some social sectors tried to separate themselves from previous national identity concepts based on authoritarianism, racial essentialism, military, and religious motifs.

This separation was encouraged by a proliferation of political discourses about national identity that emerged from the end of the twentieth century in chile that were influenced by social, economic and political changes (correa 24). Some of these changes were connected to the coming out of four left/centre governments after the dicta-torship, which from their political discourse promoted diversity and the value of minority and human rights. Accordingly, these governments developed regulations that attempted some level of legitimization of first people groups. They also created new units on the first levels of the schooling programs to promote national identity based on the teaching of the indigenous groups’ cultures and languages (Ministerio de Educación 29). Additionally, there was economic support from these governments for the publishing of children’s books and for new children’s editorial houses working on the native subject. Further-more, after dictatorship there was a tendency, in the political spheres—even among some right-wing parties—for rejecting authoritarianism and non-democratic practices.

It is not possible to assume that all the narratives after 1989 are directly connected to state post-dictatorial national identity discourses. nonethe-less, the effects of the context, mentioned above, on the authors’ creations cannot be omitted. Peter Hollindale, John Stephens and Pierre Bourdieu have shown the influence that the context can have on the production of discourse. Hollindale shows how ideology operating in texts at different levels is the product of a particular moment (30-32). knowledge, experience, values, as well as language, as Stephens argues, are histori-cally and socially rooted. Accordingly, when authors write they cannot escape the ideological assumptions of their time. Bourdieu established the concepts of the “power field” and the “intel-lectual field.” The authors’ cultural, academic, economic and family spaces form part of these fields, and the dynamics involved in the inter-relationships between the different fields have a decisive impact on the production of their ideas.

The second question is why these new nation-building discourses are created through fictions about indigenous cultures? This phenomenon, in

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part, may be due to the influence of world global-ization processes, which generate a renewed interest in the local culture as the genuine. confronting a supposed blurring of national cultural particularities because of globalization, native cultural elements such as ethnicity become important (Beller and Leerssen 25). Globaliza-tion has also helped to place multiculturalism and ecology as some of the contemporary citizen-ship preoccupations. chile, which has increasing political and economic relationships with several countries around the world, “needs to conform to the ethical, political and social standards of a contemporary nation by being concerned with these global preoccupations” (Ibaceta 44). Finally, and as christopher kellen and Björn Sundmark state, the large interconnection between ideas ofnation and children’s literature is triggered by the formative duty of teaching citizenship that writers in general face, and also because this writing allows the constant rebirth of the concepts of national for new generations of citizens (3). The construction of the indigenous image, which has been a symbol of environmen-talism since the twentieth century (Mason 87), is thus functional to the citizenship formation aims seen behind the examined texts, for it bestows a potent density encompassing contemporary national and global duties, such as the valua-tion of multiculturalism, cultural and ideological diversity, the rights of minorities and ecology.

ConclusionThe construction of indigenous hetero-images is a central narrative tool used in chilean children’s texts making up national identity discourses between 1990 and 2010. The most recurrent themes used to spread these discourses are “culture and Heritage” and “Landscape and Geography.” The first category is linked to tradi-tion and history, whereas the second emphasizes the primitiveness of geographical formation and native flora species. natives are thus portrayed in an essentialist, pre-Hispanic state. This is similar to what has been seen to happen in canadian children’s texts, where “aboriginal people [are viewed] as locked in a mystical and mythical past” (Bradford “Picturing,” 104). This way of

portraying indigeneity proves that the implied audience is not the population with a native alle-giance, but chileans as a whole. current chilean children’s texts delineate how future generations are expected to be. Accordingly, these narratives attempt to establish and legitimize the essence of a new identity that breaks with previous signs

of national identity linked to dictatorship and to racial, cultural and ideological intolerance.

In the texts analyzed, chilean culture, whose economic and cultural practices are mainly rooted in occidental European and north Amer-ican systems, is nonetheless portrayed as having a deep connection with native cultures. This is the production of a sense of identity that Pedro Güell calls the “spoken portraits,” built out of the rela-tionship that individuals establish with available national images (75). Literary auto-images based on traditional cultural elements of native groups show the desire to hold on to a supposed more genetically authentic picture of ourselves, which can stand for a model of a more promising and respectful (ideologically, culturally, and environ-mentally) society than the highly capitalist and economically seriously unequal country—inher-ited from the reforms imposed by dictatorship—in which we currently live.

Notes1. Literary works are here understood as texts

such as tales, novels, poems, or plays written independently of a particular institutional education program.

2. These were the texts available to be accessed: Sakanusoyin, El Cazador de Tierra del Fuego (1990), María Carlota y Millaqueo (1991), “Tea Tea y la Bandera de Rapa nui” Cuentos Secretos de la Historia De Chile (1992), “Meli nahuel, El Pequeño Araucano,” Cuentos Secretos De La

…these narratives attempt to establish and legitimize the essence of a new identity that breaks with previous signs of national identity linked to dictatorship and to racial, cultural and ideological intolerance.



Historia De Chile (1992), Quidora Joven Mapuche (1992), Antai (1994), Tres Príncipes (1994), Tegua (1996), Guacolda y Lautaro (1997), “El día Que nació El Mundo,” Un Diálogo Pendiente: Cuentos Ambi-entalistas (1998), La Manta Blanca (1999), Chipana (1999), cuentos Mapuches del Lago Escondido (2001), Del Cuzco al Cachapoal (2001), Kiwala La Llama De Cobre (2001), La Pequeña Lilén (2002), Los Viajeros Invisibles (2002), El Último Ona (2004), La Pequeña Yagán (2006), Elicura en el Valle Encantado (2006), Alonso en la Guerra de Arauco (2007), Cóndor Malku (2007), Terarya (2007), Flora, Cuentos Andinos (2008) and La Pequeña Chonek (2008).

3. In Flora there are seven other native cultures addressed. Here only Mapuche culture is taken into account because this is the most frequently depicted indigenous group in the history of chilean adult and children’s literature.

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Editorial del Pacífico, 1955. Print.Rojas, Manuel. La Ciudad de los Césares [The city of the caesars].

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Schkolnik, Saúl. Tres Príncipes [Three Princes]. Santiago: Andrés Bello, 1994. Print.

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Pueblo Mapuche en la Literatura Chilena [Between Myth and Reality: Mapuche people in chilean Literature]. Santiago: LOM, 1998. Print.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. Campo de Poder, Campo Intelectual: Itinerario de un Concepto [Power Field, Intellectual Field: Itinerary of a concept]. Buenos Aires: Montressor, 2002. Print.

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Bradford, clare. “Picturing Australian History: Visual Texts in nonfic-tion for children.” The Presence of the Past in Children’s Literature. Ed. Ann Lawson Lucas. London: Praeger, 2003. 99-106. Print.

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Mason, Peter. “America 2: native South Americans.” Imagology, the Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Charac-ters. Ed. Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen. Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 2007. 86 -89. Print.

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núñez, Lautaro. “La comarca Tarapaqueña, de Pertenencias y desiertos.” Revisitando Chile: Identidades, Mitos e Historias [“The Tarapaca Realm, of Belonging and deserts.” Revis-iting chile: Identity, Myths and Stories]. Ed. Sonia Montecinos. Santiago: Publicaciones del Bicentenario, 2003. 163-170. Print.

Piña, Leonardo. “El Tema Indígena en Los Textos Escolares: Algunos Alcances en Torno a su Tratamiento.” Memoria, Tradición y Modernidad en Chile: Identidades al Acecho [“The Indigenous Subject in Textbooks: Some Perspectives on Their Treatment.” Memory, Tradition and Modernity in chile: Identities to Stalking]. Santiago: cEdEM, 2001. Print.

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Yankas, Lautaro. “El Pueblo Araucano y otros Aborígenes en la Literatura chilena” [Arau-cano People and Other Aboriginals Persons in chilean Literature]. Cuadernos Hispanoameri-canos 247 (1970): 113 -37. Print.

In this exciting and beautifully illustrated picture book, an open-ended birthday party invitation leads to a surprisingly well-attended and diverse gathering. The child narrator of the book playfully warns the reader that inviting “anyone you’d like” to your birthday party encourages not only your peers to attend the festivities, but their families as well. Each guest brings a sibling and their mother to the birthday party, and a specialty dish originating from the culture to which they be-long. The party is diverse, with guests from countries all over the world, as Machado and Moreau beautifully depict cultural and traditional diversity. The illustrations are captivating, and the use of color and attention to detail make this picture book engaging. Cultural foods, colors, and clothing are incorpo-rated throughout, and the young reader is able to pick up on the cultural diversity permeating the text. While the book does successfully create a cultural mosaic, it fails to incorporate fathers into the text. Each guest brings food prepared solely by his or her mother, and the book would have benefited from depictions of dads who cook.Samantha Christensen

Ana María Machado(Illus. Hélène Moreau)

What a Party!

Toronto: Groundwood, 201332 p. ISBn: 1554981689(Picture book, ages +3)

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2013


El Fulano and Patty Swan:

Rhetorically Queering the Island in

The Meaning of Consuelo

by HILARY BREWSTER

Hilary Brewster is an Assistant Professor of English at Marshall University where she specializes in young adult literature and secondary English education. She

has book chapters forthcoming on Harry Potter translations and the narration in The Hunger Games and has presented

research at NCTE, Narrative, and MMLA.

This article is an analysis of the novel The Meaning of Consuelo that resists commentary by book reviewers that the two queer characters are insignificant to the story. Instead, a rhetorical reading of the narrative progression of the novel finds that the title character’s sexual and ethnic identity formation parallels their narrative arcs, thus queering the novel itself. The resulting identities of these three characters is what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a new mestiza consciousness.


EL FULANO And PATTY SWAn

Judith Ortiz cofer’s coming-of-age novel, The Meaning of Consuelo, is narrated by the titular character as she reflects back on the seven years of her life leading up to the tragedia of her younger

sister Milli’s slow descent into schizophrenia and eventual disappear-ance. Ignored by her parents, consuelo ultimately decides to leave her unraveled family and cherished island of Puerto Rico in order “to be a different character in their stories” (185). Though once frightened by the notion of becoming an outsider, la fulana, she ultimately chooses this role for herself instead of the one she was “assigned” which is, as her name suggests, the consoler.

As coming-of-age novels are designed to do, this story is about consuelo’s emerging identity, especially as she negotiates her cultural identity in an increasingly Americanized Puerto Rico and her gender and sexual identities in a patriarchal society. Her only refuge throughout this process is her cousin Patricio, four years her senior, who lives next door and brings shame upon the family with an escandalo: Patricio comes out as gay, and is spotted with María Sereno, the cross-dressing outcast of the neighborhood with whom consuelo is instructed never to associate.

despite being reduced to brief mentions in book reviews as “the beloved gay cousin” (Benson) or “the local transvestite” (Zaleski), I argue that Patricio and María Sereno are actually key figures in the narra-tive.1 neither serves “to shore up the ‘normative’ quality of the main character” as so often happens with gay or trans characters in Latino literature (Balderston and Maristany 200). nor do these characters exist solely to “destabilize the notions of a rigid normativity that go with sex on the continent” as other Puerto Rican gay or trans characters have done (Sabero 160).

Instead, using the tools of rhetorical narrative theory, with a partic-ular emphasis on narrative progression, I argue that consuelo’s retro-spective narration of her own emerging cultural and sexual identities parallels the narrative tensions and instabilities of the two queer char-acters. In so doing, cofer not only queers the characters sexually, but also queers the narrative as a whole. The result, for all three characters, is what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a new mestiza consciousness: that is, a perception of self and reality that blurs the lines of sexuality, gender, ethnicity and nationality.

Seymour chatman’s communication model serves as the skeleton for the rhetorical approach to narrative, or narrative as the art of commu-nication. This model—though numerous scholars have rightfully chal-lenged it—follows the status quo in narrative theory and especially for the rhetorical approach. This linear transmission, at its most basic, assumes that the implied author of a text is communicating with an implied reader, via the narrator. Wayne Booth pushes this communica-tion model further by arguing that narrative is a thoroughly rhetorical

…this story is about Consuelo’s emerging identity, especially as

she negotiates her cultural identity in an increasingly Americanized Puerto Rico and her gender and

sexual identities in a patriarchal society.

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act of communication in which the narrator and types of narration are selected by an author to engage in a particular type of rhetoric: if an author wants to produce X effect, he should choose Y technique. One of myriad techniques available to authors is narrative progres-sion, or “the synthesis of both the textual dynamics that govern the movement of narrative from beginning through middle to end and the readerly dynamics … that both follow from and influence those textual dynamics” (Phelan Experiencing 3). Put another way, the implied author chooses to move her narrative forward in order to present information to the implied reader in a specific manner to achieve a desired rhetorical effect: when a reader learns certain information in a text is just as impor-tant as what that information is. Therefore, in this essay, I pay particular attention to the progression of consuelo’s narration.

In her germinal work Borderlands/La Frontera, the late Gloria Anzaldúa writes about her need to create this new mestiza conscious-ness, born out of the need to blur the myriad lines and borders she constantly and simultaneously crosses as a chicana lesbian feminist. She argues that categories such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, sex and politics cannot be pitted against one another or taken into consideration one at a time; instead, this new mestizo constantly has to shift out of habitual formations; from convergent thinking . . . to divergent thinking characterized by a movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes … [she] copes by developing a tolerance for contradic-tions, a tolerance for ambiguity … [S]he has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good, the bad and the ugly; nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. (101)

This new self, “greater than the sum of its parts” creates a new consciousness, one whose job it is to transcend the dualities created by the various dominant paradigms (102).

Although the “struggle of the mestiza is above all a feminist one,” it is certainly not limited to females (Anzaldúa 106). This spiritual mestizaje “involves the crossing of borders, incessant metamorphosis … it …nurtures the ability to wear someone else’s skin, its central myth being shape shifting’ (Anzaldúa “Foreward” vii). Anyone who finds him or herself at the mercy of dominant paradigms with regard to sex, gender, language, culture, race, nationality and ethnicity is crossing borders and would therefore benefit by adopting and adapting this new perception of self and reality. The “supreme crossers of cultures” are homosexuals (106). Anzaldúa applauds gay men for having the courage to “expose themselves to the woman inside them and challenge the current mascu-linity” (106). Of course, the dominant paradigm has arguably less toler-ance for these bordercrossers than any other, and most cultures have tried (at times, successfully) to rid themselves of their homosexuals (40).

despite the cultural belief in the deviance inherent in persons of “other” sexualities, Anzaldúa also finds something magical in the mita y mita, the half-and-half, a muchacha who lived near her as a child. Passed down in the language of the community, she was told that s/he was a



woman who could menstruate for half the year and a man who could urinate standing up for the other half. Yet Anzaldúa points out that “primal cultures” believe in the supernatural abilities of those who possess this “inborn extraordinary gift” (41). This ability to enter both worlds is remarkable, and the utter “embodiment of hieros gamos: the coming together of opposite qualities within” (41). Although Anzaldúa views gay men and trans persons as possessing positive quali-ties or even magical ones, the dominant culture which informs [our] beliefs, does not. This culture is created by those in power (men) but transmitted by women, who must also show more of an acceptance of the cultural value system than the men (38-39).

This push and pull of dominance and resis-tance is certainly true of cofer’s storyworld. consuelo’s neighbors and family begin the narrative unequivocally rejecting María Sereno and pressuring Patricio to remain closeted. The novel opens with a description of María Sereno taking his daily stroll to buy a piragua from the seller on the street. consuelo describes his dress, including his “obviously empty brassiere,” shoes and hair, and the slap-slap of his flip-flops as he sashays down the street. consuelo tells us that “his image contains [her] earliest understanding of a key phrase in [her] family’s conversations: el fulano, or la fulana; used to refer to an outsider, he or she is never called by name” (3). We learn that he is twenty-eight years old and lives with his mother because he cannot afford a place of his own, since “any man who hired him would be exposed to ridicule, too” (4). He does manage to make some money as a secret manicurist, coming into the homes of the neighborhood women while their husbands are at work. If a man were to catch him alone in the house with his wife, she would lie about his purpose and send him slinking out the back door with his head down.

consuelo’s mother is a regular customer, but in public consuelo and her sister Mili are instructed to pretend they do not know him. consuelo admits that, at eight years old, she “did not know the difference between duplicity and manners” and thinks that everyone except María Sereno wants to be gente decente—decent

people (5). Her mother has taught her the rules of the dominant culture—that he is literally not a decent person. Yet, when a ball she and Mili are playing with gets away from them and María Sereno catches it on his daily walk back home: she “froze. Was he friend or foe? He came inside [her] home often by invitation, though only through the back door … [she] stood frozen in her indecision … [S]hould [she] have screamed then?” (6). knowing she is being watched by the gossiping eyes of the neighbor ladies, she drags Mili into the house where they get their hands scrubbed with Mami’s new Palmolive soap as she lectures them never to talk to him in public again. When consuelo attempts to point out that he has been inside their home, she is summarily and sternly hushed. The next time he comes over to give Mami a manicure, he gives consuelo a look that said “ ‘betrayal.’ La traicìon. It told me I had somehow caused him pain, but [she] didn’t know exactly how. And maybe it asked [her] if [she] thought it couldn’t happen to [her]—if [she] thought [she] could never become la fulana [herself]” (11).

At this point in the narrative, consuelo’s reporting of these facts positions María Sereno clearly as both a warning of the consequences of

choosing to live a life outside of the dominant, patriarchal, heteronormative culture, but also of the subversive, hypocritical nature of consuelo’s community. Engaging in this public-private dichotomy shames consuelo since she “felt inex-tricably like crying” when María Sereno looks at her (11). Mami, who has a “list of set-in-stone

At this point in the narrative, Consuelo’s reporting of these facts positions María Sereno clearly as

both a warning of the consequences of choosing to live a life outside

of the dominant, patriarchal, heteronormative culture, but also of

the subversive, hypocritical nature of Consuelo’s community.

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rules about people and relationships” that consuelo is to “internalize without question” (9) has clearly not accepted him; she only allows him to use a drinking glass that has been sequestered from the others, even while he paints her nails. Yet at this point, María Sereno is described as condoning this two-facedness from his female neighbors—slinking out the back door if caught by a husband is part of the “deal”—yet the way he “smiles enigmatically at no one in particular” after he is finished with his snow cone (4) and the “slow regal pace” (7) with which he walks home indicates that consuelo believes he has also accepted himself, being so brave as to publicly stuff his shirt with the crumpled paper cone from his flavored ice. María Sereno, then, lives on this borderland of community disdain and self acceptance.

Soon after the description of the initial inci-dent with María Sereno, consuelo introduces the reader to her cousin, Patricio. consuelo describes Patricio’s “long eyelashes that cast shadows on his smooth cheeks” (16) and tells us that her mother thinks his hair too beautiful “to be wasted on a boy” (16). She tells us that Mami considers Patricio “an odd child” who designs costumes for handmade puppets; it disturbs Mami that “a nearly grown muchacho [is] playing with dolls,” but she at least allows consuelo to continue social-izing with him, so there is no outright rejection of him (12, 14). Patricio’s father (Papi’s brother) worries that he is a recluse who is “too quiet and never brought other boys his age home with him from school” (14).

Because this is narrated retrospectively, consuelo’s use of hints (rather than stating clearly “my cousin was gay,” information she has at the time of the telling) is rhetorically purposeful; the implied reader understands these narrative details as signals of Patricio’s closeted sexual identity, even if the experiencing “I” of young consuelo does not. Furthermore, in their frequent puppet games, Patricio stages a scene with his puppet designed after Tio domingo in which the Patricio puppet never speaks; he is acting out his own isolation from his father through his child-like games. Patricio also enjoys wearing beauti-fully decorated masks and acting out characters;

his favorite character, a swan—a play on his last name—is mute. Patricio sees himself as having no voice of his own. Even at the young age of twelve, Patricio is isolated. Again, the implied reader (though not consuelo) understands these details as symbolic of Patricio’s closeted misery. And while he is regarded with a hint of skepticism by Mami, he is still accepted by his community and family, though his voicelessness signals that he does not accept himself. He is, therefore, the queer narrative foil of María Sereno; this indi-cates a very careful narrative structuring toward a particular rhetorical purpose on behalf of the implied author. The proximity of María Sereno and Patricio’s arcs—both to each other and to the beginning of the narrative—highlights their importance as well. The implied reader is alerted to the significance of these two characters, who cofer has queered, in consuelo’s memory of this particular time in her life. The narrative tension for both characters has launched questions—the implied reader is primed to ask “will Patricio come out of the closet?” “Will María Sereno get caught (painting nails)?”—and readers are also positioned to wonder about the narrative connection between the two queer characters and consuelo.

The next time María Sereno is mentioned in the narrative, three years has passed in the story-world and consuelo is almost eleven. She goes to visit her cousin, Patricio and notices that his voice is “hoarse and choked as if he had been crying” (41). Patricio her tells a story about interacting with María Sereno and what he—a closeted gay teen—heard the neighborhood women saying about María Sereno (which he will not divulge to consuelo). At this point, consuelo sees tears “rolling down Patricio’s face” (42).

Three years later, the community is still shun-ning María Sereno, for his outright rejection of their sexual and gender norms, and he is still seemingly unconcerned about their approval, at least as relayed by Patricio. Their comments obviously impact Patricio’s character deeply, and the implied reader (though still not consuelo) understands it is because he identifies with María Sereno’s sexual identity Otherness. Furthermore, that the two characters are now linked in the



narrative is a move on the implied cofer’s part that the reader interprets as significant: not only do María Sereno and Patricio know each other in the storyworld, their relationship is one to keep an eye on, which adds to the narrative tension.

This connection is further emphasized a few pages later, when consuelo describes being “interrogated” by her mother about who she has seen going in and out of Patricio’s house, if she had seen anyone other than the housekeeper, or any “strange men” coming or going. consuelo tells her no, and then shares her internal dialogue:

Had I lied? no, I told myself. I had simply

not chosen to tell about the person I thought I saw slipping into Patricio’s house by the back door. Perhaps I had imagined it, been fooled by a shadow as I crossed over the bushes into my own backyard. And perhaps I had not heard the slap-slap of flip-flops other than mine. It could have been only one silhou-etted figure at Patricio’s window, not a couple like I thought I saw (44-45).

The flip-flops are a clear narrative reference to María Sereno, and while experiencing-consuelo may not fully understand what she saw (if she did see it at all), the implied cofer includes this here in order to eliminate any remaining doubt in the reader. These ideas are reiter-ated a while later, when Patricio tells consuelo “always remember this: the best place to hide something from others is in front of their noses. Most people never see the obvious” (48). consuelo might not fully get what he means, but the implied reader does: he and María Sereno are in a romantic, likely sexual, relationship. This implications also indi-cates a move on Patricio’s part toward his new mestiza consciousness: he is willing to risk public humiliation and familial rejection in order to engage in romantic and sexual behavior that he knows is outside his culture’s norms because he has accepted that this is part of his identity.

To further blur lines of nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality, Patri-cio’s father plans to move the two of them to new York. He claims it is because of the economy—Puerto Rico is now a booming real estate market for tourists—but in consuelo’s house they “knew that Patricio’s strange behavior over the last year and the gossip it was engendering were the real reasons” (46). consuelo eavesdrops on her family talking about Patricio and how his behavior is a tragedia and an escandalo; his uncle refers to him as a pato, a duck, slang for homosexual (and an easy comparison to “swan”). The gossip has gotten back to the family that Patricio was spotted at los baños, the tourist-trap hot springs, with “El fulano…what they call people too low on their morality scale to even mention their name. But this time [she] knew who el fulano was” (53). One aunt hopes that “domingo can get the poor boy straightened out

Furthermore, that the two characters are now linked in

the narrative is a move on the implied Cofer’s part that the reader

interprets as significant: not only do María Sereno and Patricio

know each other in the storyworld, their relationship is one to keep an

eye on, which adds to the narrative tension.

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in nueva York” and Mami agrees that new York might be the only way to get him away from “bad influences” (54).

In this way, the U.S. is a symbol for patriarchal religion and culture (Smith and Johnson 18), the opposite of their changing homeland. (That the island is changing as a result of American economic interests appears lost on the adults, however.) This potential relocation contributes to the blurring lines of cultural and sexual identities, at least how the parents envision them: the steadfast, patriarchal culture of the United States, unlike the changing culture of Puerto Rico, is what will alter Patricio’s sexuality, which is, as they see it, a result of his environment.

It takes Tìo domingo two more years to commit to the decision of moving to new York and in this time Patricio has created a life for himself within the confines of the small island. He is hanging out with artists and students in old San Juan, selling art, drinking café, talking politics, art and literature in this newfound Bohemian existence (62). His mestiza consciousness is developing further: he is obviously still Puerto Rican but, at least in the capital city, he is mostly openly gay, a sexu-ality identity at odds with the norms of his ethnic iden-tity construction. The notion that Patricio is engaging in openly rebellious behavior excites the maturing consuelo. consuelo is beginning to understand that despite what her family claims—that “the rule most honored…is loyalty to one’s blood, no matter what they did”—it does matter to them that Patricio has “stepped over this imaginary line” and brought shame upon them (70). The family’s abuse of the queer characters is juxtaposed with consuelo’s acceptance (Smith and Johnson 20). Because the narrative is focalized through consuelo, the implied reader is also positioned to accept and sympathize with the plights of Patricio and María Sereno. Until now, the reader’s judgment of consuelo’s family has not aligned with consuelo’s understanding of where her sympathies should lie, thus making her an unreliable narrator along the axis of knowledge and perception (Phelan Living 50), but cofer secures that in this particular scene.

Finally, the day has arrived for Tìo domingo and Patricio to leave Puerto Rico. As the family waits at the gate for them to board their plane to new York, consuelo cries on Patricio’s shoulder, then Patricio gets in line to board and “did not look back” (84). This is symbolic of Patricio potentially rejecting his ethnic identity in favor of his sexual one: though the adults think new York will “straighten him out,” Patricio is seem-ingly glad to leave his beloved island behind. Gloria Anzaldúa writes that she, too, “had to leave home to find [her]self, find [her] intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on [her]” (38). On the car ride home from the airport, Mami figuratively washes her hands of “the sick son” and consuelo “experiences a sense of disloca-tion,” as if Mami were taking about “some other girl named consuelo”


EL FULAnO And PATTY SWAn

(84). consuelo’s dislocation of self follows Patri-cio’s departure, which signals a symbolic narra-tive link between the two that goes beyond their blood-ties in the storyworld into issues of iden-tity. Indeed, through his rare letters—having taken the name Patty Swan as his pseudonymous alter ego for purposes of communicating with his cousin—upon arriving and settling into life in new York, consuelo “could see the old Patricio between the lines, even as a new self-confident Patricio emerged” (96), a signal of the continued blurring of his identity markers along ethnic and sexual lines.

A few months later when consuelo receives another letter; Patricio writes “you can write to Patty Swan at this address until she starts making enough money to move to a bigger place” (126). neither Patricio nor the reader has any reason to believe consuelo is worried the letters will be discovered, so within the rules and confines of their written exchange, it is almost unneces-sary for Patricio to refer to himself by name in that particular sentence—he could have just as easily said “me” without losing meaning—and it is particularly interesting that he also includes the feminine pronoun “she.” cofer’s choice here on Patricio’s behalf queers not only Patricio the character, but the impact his presence in the United States is having on his identity, further complicating the perceived heternormativity and patriarchy of America.

Although consuelo’s narration has been mostly focused on Patricio and his move to new York, we also learn that María Sereno has been transitioning from male to female by giving himself cooking oil based breast implants—further blurring the boundaries of his gender identity, though not his ethnic identity, as he is still limited to an existence within the confines of his solely Puerto Rican community. Of course, the rigidly gendered community does not accept this and he has become “a spectacle” (133). consuelo tells us that on the afternoons she watched him “walk down the middle of the line of verbal fire,” he would toss his hair and would “get bolder the more he was mocked” by the neighbors’ singsong insults (134-135). This goes on for weeks, until one day he collapses, bursts one of his man-made

implants, and is rushed to the hospital where he stays for a long time; certainly no one visits him—they won’t even offer to drive his mother to see him. While always a social outcast from the community, he is now physically outcast as well. This narrative move on cofer’s part again makes foils of Patricio and María Sereno; she continues to highlight the thematic narrative link between the two queer characters. Though Patricio’s arc has been emphasized more at this point, cofer returns to María Sereno’s arc, as the former’s narrative tension has been resolved. This choice continues to position the reader to be concerned with the queering of the text. To put it another way, the reader knows what happens to the gay character—now we wonder what lies in store for the trans one.

After María Sereno’s narrative absence (as a result of his hospitalization), one day late in the spring, Mami offers to take consuelo on a visit to the beauty shop. They take the bus to the tourist area full of Americanized luxury hotels, and much to consuelo’s surprise, María Sereno is at the salon working as a full-time manicurist. consuelo “gasped in amazement” when she saw him, and tells us “he looked stunning” in the themed sailor’s uniform (147). Given Mami’s utter disdain for anyone who lives beyond the border of cultural norms, consuelo is (under-standably) confused why her mother brought her to see him. They go in to get their nails done, and it is obvious María Sereno is adored by his clients; he entertains everyone with salacious gossip and hilarious imitations of his American patrons. When consuelo expresses disbelief that his stories can be true, he tells her that she “had not been looking closely enough, or [she] would have known by now that ‘normal’ is a rare thing” (148). As they are leaving the salon, María Sereno pins a little bronze star on consuelo’s shirt. At home, Papi asks where she got it, and she lies and says she found it on the bus. Papi replies that it’s a “medal for courage in the field of action. Strange that someone would be carrying that around with him.” Mami says “[o]r with her” (149, emphasis original).

This scene is particularly significant for queering the narrative as a whole. Mami used

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to interact with María only in secret, but is now interacting with him in public unashamedly. Mami, who once referred to her gay nephew as “sick,” even acknowledges María Sereno’s blurred gender lines with her use of the female pronoun in her response to Papi’s comments. That María Sereno has found financial success by working in a heavily Americanized section of the island, serving both Puerto Rican and American clients at the salon, highlights his mestiza conscious-ness: although he is geographically bound to the island, he has been accepted by, and fits in with, another cultural identity while simultaneously blurring gender roles by wearing a rather flam-boyant work uniform at a job that is tradition-ally female. Furthermore, to the implied reader, María pinning the star on consuelo serves as a symbolic foreshadowing of the passing of the torch that soon consuelo will be la fulana in her family.

With the tension about María Sereno complete, cofer returns briefly to Patricio, who has been writing less and less frequently. As the narrative is near closing, consuelo is only getting “an occasional note from ‘Patty Swan’” whose Americanized, female identity she snidely puts in quotation marks. In his last letter to her, after it has been established that conseulo’s family is also moving to new York (they ultimately don’t due to Milli’s disappearance), Patricio writes, “[you] may leave the island, niña, but it will never leave you. We all carry the plantain stain with us, la mancha, inside or out, wherever we go” (174). Again, the symbolic link between Patricio and María Sereno and their respective blurring of ethnic lines is obvious: the latter remains on the island, surrounded by Americans, the former is in the United States, and cannot fully leave behind his Puerto Rican identity.

Reading the rhetorical moves of this novel, focused on the queerness of the two secondary characters, their blurred gender and ethnic iden-tities as a result of rejecting (or being rejected by) a culture deeply entrenched in patriarchy and Heteronormativity, and their respective narra-tive arcs demonstrates the significance of both Patricio and María Sereno. Additionally, though Smith and Johnson argue that “consuelo’s sexual

identity is problematized by gender restrictions in her present and changing Puerto Rican land-scape (21), this is only true in the storyworld. The

rhetoric and ethics of the narrative itself chal-lenge these gender restrictions, and actually queer consuelo’s sexual arc as well by linking it with those of Patricio and María Sereno.

consuelo’s reporting of her own budding sexuality mirrors closely Patricio’s emerging homosexual identity. After consuelo evades the truth of potentially having seen María Sereno in Patricio’s room, she first notices her developing breasts (45). She menstruates for the first time just as Patricio is spotted at los baños with María (50). After Patricio leaves for new York and is establishing himself in his new community, presumably now openly gay, consuelo loses her virginity to a male classmate on the night of her fifteenth birthday (113). Yet it is María Sereno, el fulano, who gives her the strength to handle being socially ostracized for her sexual choices. After months of being ridiculed by peers for sleeping with Wilhelm, consuelo confronts him at a local restaurant. As she walks into Pedro’s Burger, she “squared [her] shoulders and held [her] head in the style of María Sereno … it was [her] show” (157). not only does she confront Wilhelm, she convinces him to tell everyone that he lied about what happened. She reclaims a public iden-tity, emboldened by María’s narrative of literally falling down and rising up. Indeed, to diminish the importance of either queer character’s role, or more accurately, to ignore the significance of a rhetorical reading of this text, which queers the novel as a whole by linking the protagonist to the aforementioned queer characters, undermines not only her search for identity—sexually or other-wise—but the narrative’s purpose as a whole.

The rhetoric and ethics of the narrative itself challenge these gender restrictions, and actually queer Consuelo’s sexual arc as well by linking it with those of Patricio and María Sereno.



Furthermore, I want to resist Smith and Johnson’s reading that “consuelo’s move to the land of the colonists suggest that patriarchy and heterosexism continue to be central to the adolescent female iden-tity even as she may—we do not know—still be searching for her own identity” (25). Yes, the narrative ends in a way that does not make clear any further development on consuelo’s search for identity—narratives cannot go on forever—but Patricio and María Sereno end the narrative with identities that achieve Gloria Anzaldua’s new mestiza conscious-ness, and the aforementioned narrative parallel among the three char-acters indicates the likelihood of the same holding true for our narrator.

María has achieved his mestiza consciousness: he is still proudly Puerto Rican, but is thriving among the Americans tourists. His attempt to literally feminize his male body failed, but he has been accepted by a community doing female-gendered work. Patricio, on the other hand, is thriving in America as an out gay man who remains inherently Puerto Rican. consuelo’s sexual and gender identity is also blurred, despite her non-queer sexuality. A female in a patriarchal culture, her choice to engage in pre-marital sex leaves her—and not her male partner—an outsider among her peers. Yet she effectively performs traditional masculinity at the restaurant by confronting Wilhelm, very nearly threatening him into altering his (true) telling of her sexual narrative. In this way, she has reclaimed her public sexual identity, and is simul-taneously a virgin and also not. Her decision to go to new York, rather than remain with her now dysfunctional family in Puerto Rico, mimics her gay cousin’s identity narrative, and unlike María Sereno, whose was defined by others as el fulano, consuelo chooses this identity for herself.

Notes1. The reviews, released around the time of the book’s publication in

2003, use the word “transvestite” which is no longer considered appropriate by the LBGTQ community or their allies. Instead, the preferred term is transgender, or just trans, which I will use throughout this paper. (See the brief article on Transgender Termi-nology released by the national council for Transgender Equality, 2009, for more detailed explanation of this and other terms.) Addi-tionally, María Sereno’s character is most often described with the pronoun “he”, which I will use for purposes of clarity, despite the fact that trans persons tend to prefer to use the pronoun of their presented gender, which in this case would be “she.”

Works Cited

Children’s Bookscofer, Judith Ortiz. The Meaning of Consuelo. new York: Farrar, Straus

& Giroux, 2003. Print.

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New Mestiza. 3rd. ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Foreword.” Cassell ’s Ency-clopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Lore. London: cassell, 1997. Print.

Balderston, daniel and Maristany, Jose. “The Lesbian and Gay novel in Latin America.” The Cambridge Companion to the Latin Amer-ican Novel. Ed. Efrain kristal. new York: cambridge UP, 2005. Print.

Benson, Mary M. “Ortiz cofer, Judith. The Meaning of consuelo.” Library Journal. 128.18 (2003): 126. Print.

Booth, Wayne c. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. chicago, U of chicago P: 1983. Print.

chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narra-tive Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, nY: cornell UP: 1978. Print.

Phelan, James. Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narra-tive. columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 2007. Print.

—. Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca, nY: cornell UP: 2005. Print.

Smith, Ann Marie and Johnson, keith H. “Resistance, Gender, and Postcolonial Identi-ties in Somebody’s Daughter and The Meaning of Consuelo.” The Alan Review 40.1 (2012): 18-26. Print.

Subero, Gustavo. “Fear of the Trannies.” Latin American Research Review 43.2 (2008): 159-179. Print.

Zaleski, Jeff. “The Meaning of consuelo (Book).” Publishers Weekly 250.32 (2003): 252. Print.

This quirky book evokes the tradition of magical realism, us-

ing a child’s-eye view of the world around her to ask questions

about what is commonplace and what is unusual. When the

central character ventures out of her house in the morning, she

sees such strange sights that she can’t believe no one around

her seems to find these things noteworthy. The people she sees

around her have either very unusual physical characteristics or

strange behaviours, including a role reversal where a dog walks

a man on a leash through a park. This book simultaneously raises

questions around how we define “normal” and how we become

blind to the mysteries embedded in our everyday lives. For adults

reading this book, it may spark musings on how our own assump-

tions about what is mundane may be very different from some-

one’s in another context. It also draws on the tradition of the story

of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where a child unfettered by

convention is able to identify a truth that others fear to name. Chil-

dren will delight in the absurd images of men with clarinet noses

or birdbath chins and women with flower gardens or fish bowls on

their heads, but be left with the question at the end: “What does it

mean to be different?”

Deena Hinshaw

Paula Bossio

Los Diferentes [The different Ones]

Bogotá, colombia: Editorial GatoMalo, 201232 p. ISBn: 978-958-57365-0-4(Picturebook; Ages 3+)

B

ogoTá

c

o l o m Bia2012


“We do not promote reading: we arrange life,” says the philosopher, editor and secretary of the national Reading Plan of Brazil, José castilho. A phrase like

this clarifies so many of life’s complications, and provides inspiration in its subtle profundity. For over fifteen years, in several venues, I’ve met hundreds of volunteer reading mediators, with whom I shared bread, salt, and books. We have arranged our lives around reading.

One of my fondest experiences was directing México’s national Reading Rooms Program in Mexico, which is already in its eigh-teenth year. In these pages I would like to present an overview of what I learned from the generosity of the volunteer mediators reading program, because I think it is essential to recognize and

To A

rran

ge L

ife a

mon

g Bo

oks

by SOCORRO VENEGAS

Socorro Venegas is a Mexican author of several storybooks: Room, The Laughter of Lilies, The Whitest Death and All the Islands, for which she won the National Poetry Prize. She has received grants from the National Fund for Culture and

the Arts, and the Mexican Center of Writers, and was resident writer at the

Writers Room in New York. Her work has been translated into English and French. Currently she is Manager of Collections

of Children’s Books at the Economic Culture Fund.

Images are used with permission, courtesy of PNLS (Programa Nacional de Salas de Lectura)

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TO ARRAnGE LIFE AMOnG BOOkS

share their experiences.The national Reading Rooms Program was created to offer adult

readers an alternative space that could allow them to continue reading outside formal literacy institutions, like the school library. But as time went by, children began to inhabit the Reading Rooms, not only as users, but also as reading mediators. Such is the case of karen ceballos, a girl from the mountains of Oaxaca, who decided one day to read to her friends and neighbors the beautiful books from the local Reading Room, gathered by its attendant, Eliz Olivella.

Yet the Reading Room program is not confined to traditional space, by the example of a child in the cancer ward at Queretaro’s hospital in his desire to be read Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch. He knew his own story was encrypted in this book, and in those pages he found the words that helped him translate his last days of life into a language of hope. Another example comes from the children of pris-oners from a jail in campeche, who asked their parents to request more children’s books on prison for the local Reading Room. We were initially surprised by those requests, but then we realized that children and parents were able to find and recognize each other, and speak about the stories they read together during the brief time they were allowed to share. children were often allowed to borrow the books and return happily to tell their parents about how the story continued.

Recent years have been critical for children in México, as traditional institutions that have supported Mexican society have been brutally transformed. now more than ever, violence unleashed by the war on drugs has not only compromised the physical integrity of thousands of families, but has also weakened and often broken community ties. In this country, where criminal groups have imposed false checkpoints and curfews on our citizens, volunteer reading mediators armed only with books from the Reading Room have given meaning and viability towards a life free of these constraints. I know this from Marisol Lizár-raga, a teacher from La noria, Sinaloa. Although she could have left the town besieged by criminals, she decided to stay and build a community museum. She opened a Reading Room where she began to teach chil-dren to paint, to share readings, and to discuss their concerns. The quote below is part of her experience, told to the local newspaper, Sin embargo (http://www.sinembargo.mx/25-02-2013/535362):

Students gather and invent their own stories. They have to set their imagination free, for that’s what it means to be a child. Lupita, a 13 years old girl, is up to create a script for her group and she comes up with a plot that deals with the search for a missing person in a near forest. Lupita has two brothers, who also attend the workshop, Juan david and carlos Enrique. Their father had been missing for more than a year. He is a traditional carpenter in La noria, who left to a nearby town to do a job and has not returned yet. now he is considered a missing person.



What do reading mediators actually do in these regions across the country where there is seemingly no place to read, to write, or even to imagine?

I recently asked one of the Los Fabuladores [Fable-Tellers], a group of policemen from Queré-taro who are dedicated to reading in schools and who attend an itinerant Reading Room, what transformations he has observed in people after reading to them. He began by telling me about the changes he has personally experienced as a reader, and about what it meant for him to cease being a part of an elite police corps. His former companions saw him as a man who had fallen from the graces of duty, a lab rat in an experiment aimed to transform the bad image of the police. Having been trained for reading and storytelling, this policeman was taken to schools to practice his new task of reading to children and youth. The children could not believe what they saw: an officer with a book in hand, skill-fully reading, conversing, and listening. now he is grateful for his new career path and wouldn’t change. He has gained supporters of his cause and has found the arguments needed to convince authori-ties to grant the permits and resources needed to continue his loving labor. As Paulo Freire once said, in forming readers we are training citizens, meaning that readers routinely critique them-selves and their world, making them more apt to confront and transform it. This has already been achieved by the Fable-Tellers. After meeting them, I can’t imagine them not executing an order without weighing it first. But do not tell anyone!

The fundamental task of the state is to propose a consistent policy to promote reading. At this moment in México, we have several institutional programs whose goals are to promote reading, yet

whose methods lack the necessary precision to be effective. Following the example of my friend the storytelling policeman, I will tell you a little about how books came into my life, because as in his case, public policy made them available to me.

I was ten years old and my younger brother had just died, after enduring five years of devas-tating leukemia treatment. My home was like a shipwrecked raft, and as with any shipwreck, things came and went from who knows where and who knows how. The TV was gone. It was broken and it seemed sad to my father to repair it, maybe because my brother was not going to

watch it anymore. I did not dare to ask it to be fixed, and I doubt he would have listened to me. Suddenly there was nothing to do. However, I soon discovered that one of my uncles who came to the funeral had forgotten a book at my home. It was a novel written in the form of a girl’s diary. Her name was désiree clary, the daughter of a silk merchant, and girl-friend to a man named napoleon. One day she discovered that napoleon was marrying a girl named

Josefina, and she began to weep beside the River Seine. Precisely when she was crying along the Seine, désiree was discovered by a very tall, mature man, a marshal of napoleon’s army, who prevented her from launching herself into the dark waters. Imagine how the plot thickens: this officer marries désiree and eventually renounces French citizenship to become king of Sweden, and the silk merchant ‘s daughter becomes Queen. This story is an historic novel. The char-acters are people who really existed, and various historical events described in the story are verifi-able. I like to look at the heirs of the Swedish Royalty in ¡Hola!, the Spanish magazine, and I still try to find the face of that girl who wrote such an alluring diary.

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In those sad days I read my first novel and started writing a diary. In my house, like many others today, most reading was designed with more functional advantages, like how to solve a child’s homework. But at home I was fortunate, as there were many encyclopedias and diction-aries, and a biography of Abraham Lincoln, which I read many times. What happened to me is well described in Michele Petit’s book, The Art of Reading in Times of Crisis, edited by daniel Goldin: “Books help sometimes to endure pain or distance fear, to transform sorrow in ideas and regain the joy.”

By the time I got to high school and decided that writing a novel was more important than improving my math skills, I had already read a number of books without needing to use my school library. Most of them were borrowed from my friends. And then, one can say that the rest is history. Having failed math for three semesters confined me to three summers studying at a public library to prepare for exams. The library became a second home for me. I found a consistent collec-tion of high quality books on the library’s home loan policy. My time spent reading allowed me to improve my skills and to even tutor my class-mates. I spent some happy summers of my life at the public library.

now let’s think of all those Mexicans who have no access to books. Let’s take a glimpse of the majority who have not had the opportunity to read books. The statistical reality sometimes leaves us with the feeling that we will never be able to do enough, even though in recent years there has been a consistent development of government programs to promote reading. Access to books is not fair yet. It is estimated that in México there is a bookstore for every 100,000 inhabitants. This data contrasts with Spain, where there is a library for every 12,000 inhabitants, or Argentina, where there is one for every 15,000. In costa Rica there is one for every 27,000, and in Brazil there is a library for every 49,365 inhabitants.

México has a strong infrastructure, and one of the largest free textbook distribution programs in the world, through the national commis-sion of Free Text Book (cOnALITEG). We have 7,320 public libraries and 850,000 school

libraries sponsored by the Ministry of Educa-tion. There are about 4500 Reading Rooms managed by volunteer mediators. The scenario is quite complex: we have an almost totally literate country, but with little understanding of what is read. This is not strange at all. We do have infra-structure, nevertheless our main problem is we have not been able to work effectively in linking efforts. In schools it is recommended to establish reading exercises as a task to be accomplished in a given time, while in other institutions, we promote reading without timers, sustaining that reading and writing are not an obligation but a right, and we even go further: there is also a right to not read. We need a consistent policy.

I return to my public library. The Govern-ment’s decision—based on the General Libraries Law—put at my disposal a collection that included the algebra book Baldor, so that I could solve the task and pass my exams. Leisure and curiosity led me to the shelves where the books were labeled with the number 800: the dewey classification for literature. nevertheless, the random circumstances that initiated me into the world of reading are not necessarily those of the majority in this or in other countries of Latin America. That bookstores or libraries are open does not mean that access to these places is guar-anteed in our societies. The truth is that we need mediators: librarians, volunteers, booksellers, teachers; people trained to perform the essen-tial duty of sharing books in whatever media. We all know that a book is not the only thing that’s shared in the reading process; we also share affection, trust, and generosity.

In 2009, a team of collaborators from cOnAcULTA (national council for culture and the Arts), me among them, worked in re-founding the national Reading Rooms Program. These rooms are civic spaces served by volunteers, in which ordinary people can socialize as if they were in a public square, and they can also read. cOnAcULTA gives media-tors an initial stock of specifically selected books and training. We fully understood how impor-tant it was to have a good stock, but the truth is that if we had to choose between distributing books or training reading mediators, we would



have done the latter, because that person placed between books and potential readers is funda-mental: who and how will describe a book, who and how will invite to a reading session, who and how will maintain a hospitable space in which we can all begin to associate books, readings and conversations with affective experiences.

Back to my story: a mediator of the caliber of those in our Reading Rooms or a good school librarian would have put in my hands a book of Salgari or Verne, long before I was able to do it by myself. Reading Room experience has allowed the creation of new spaces, other ways to reach out to readers, people who never imagined them-selves in that way. What happens when reading is promoted? Without exaggeration I can say that lives are transformed. not only for readers, also for those who accompany others in their reading. Such is the case of the young mediator in Querétaro who read Duck, Death and the Tulip for a group of children in the oncology ward at a hospital. One of them, to whom I referred at the beginning of this piece, asked her to read the

book again, just for him. He listened with all his attention. Then he said that thanks to that story, he no longer would fear death.

In México we have been able to broaden the spectrum of readers, and make reading as necessary as bread. We need to link the readers training programs implemented by the State with civil society initiatives. We are all moved by the same goal: to train full readers. no one should lose a vision of the time when everyone can exercise his or her right to read: we must ensure access to written culture. This is where the mediators, in flesh and blood, or from Twitter or Facebook, are fundamental. There is still work to do on reducing the digital gap, and in that larger context it is essential to link reading to new tech-nologies in both educational and extracurricular spaces.

I started with a quotation from José castilho: “not to promote reading, but to arrange life.” That is the hope: the power of words on everyone’s lips in the future.

This collaborative project began with students Fatma Al Remaihi and Al-Hussein Wanas, who collected folktales from Arabian Gulf countries, and then approached their professors with a book idea. Sponsored by the Qatar Foundation Undergraduate Research Experience Pro-gram, The Donkey Lady is a rich anthology of diverse folklore, put together by a collective of more than fifty story collectors, translators, illustrators, and designers. A large-format hardcover, the book is filled with stories, each offering a different narrative stance and illustrations to match. Children around the world will be amused by the humor in many of these stories, even as they learn about the cultures that produced them. They will also enjoy the different versions of stories they already know, such as the Cinderella-like “Hamda and the Fairy Fish.” The illustrative styles range from highly realistic to im-pressionistic to anime, and techniques vary from story to story. The designers have done a superlative job with this book; it is beautiful, entertaining, and enlightening.Roxanne Harde

Patty Paine, Jesse Ulmber, and Michael Hersrud, eds.

The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf

Highclere, Uk: Berkshire Academic Press, 2013256 p.ISBn: 9781907784125(Picturebook, 4+)

HigHclere

UniTed Kingdo

m

2013


Puerto Rican children’s literature is rich with the legacy of the legends of the Taínos. The Taínos, the indigenous people who inhabited the island, have been the inspiration for many of

the stories published for Puerto Rican youngsters. The picture book Atariba and Niguayona: A Story from the Taíno People of Puerto Rico is a good example. This book was written by Harriet Rohmer based on stories from the Taíno oral tradition. Other stories inspired by the Taíno culture are Corasi, written by Walter Murray chiesa and The Golden Flower: A Taíno Myth from Puerto Rico, written by nina Jaffe.

Other books deal with characters that have become iconic on this island, such as Juan Bobo, whose antics and different way of thinking have captured the imaginations of children and adults alike. In 1995, carmen Bernier-Grand published an English version of the adventures of this simpleton character in her book Juan Bobo: Four Folktales from Puerto Rico, part of the I Can Read Books series.

Puerto Rican Children’s Literature and the N

eed for A

fro-Puerto Rican Stories

by CARMEN MILAGROS TORRES-RIVERA

Carmen Milagros Torres-Rivera is a graduate student at the University of

Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Caribbean

Linguistics. She teaches at the University of Puerto Rico Humacao. Her interest include Afro-Puerto Rican children’s

literature, writing children’s stories and Puerto Rican identity and race.

Coquí, Drums and Dreams (2013) is used with the kind permission of Erick Ortiz Gelpí.


PUERTO RIcAn cHILdREn’S LITERATURE And THE nEEd FOR AFRO-PUERTO RIcAn STORIES

The Juan Bobo character, who understands things differently from other people, appears not only in Bernier-Grand’s book, but also in the picture book Juan Bobo Goes to Work: A Puerto Rican Folktale, written by Marisa Montes. Another Juan Bobo book by this same author is Juan

Bobo Goes Up and Down the Hill: A Puerto Rican Folk Tale. Ari Acevedo additionally presents a re-telling of one of Juan Bobo’s most memorable misadventures in the book Juan Bobo Sends the Pig to Mass.

The coquí, the little brown amphibian that has become the symbol of Puerto Rico, is also celebrated in many of the stories that are published for children. One of the classic novels that is mostly remembered in its Spanish translation is The Green Song by doris Troutman Plenn. This 1950s book, through the character of Pepe coquí, became a symbol of the Puerto Rican migration to new York as well as a representation of Puerto Rican iden-tity. More recent books that include the coquí are Marisa de Jesús Paolicelli’s award-winning book There’s a Coquí in my Shoe published in 2007 and Ed Rodríguez’s Kiki Koki: The Enchanted Legend of the Coquí Frog, published

in 2010. de Jesús Paolicelli’s book won the International Latino Book Awards Winner in the category of Best Educational children’s Book in English as well as an honorable mention (second prize) for the Best children’s Picture Book in English. Another book starring the coquí is

the bilingual Spanish-English book Everywhere Coquis/ En Dondequiera Coquies, by nancy Hooper. Lulu delacre, illustrator of many children’s book such as The Storytell-er’s Candle/ La Velita de los Cuentos, also wrote a series of stories with the coquí as the main character. One of the chapter books in Scholastic’s I can Read series is titled Rafi and Rosi. These two coquí siblings are also featured in Rafi and Rosi: Carnival of this same series.

Writers of Puerto Rican children’s books have usually taken a folkloric perspective in their writing that echoes the focus of Pura Belpré, the renowned children’s book writer, storyteller, and first Latino librarian in the new York city library system. This approach differs greatly from nicholasa Mohr’s more realistic portrayal of the challenges faced by Puerto Ricans in the United States in many of her works intended for tweeners and young adults. However, the folkloric representations of Puerto Rican culture lack a balanced representation of the full extent of Puerto Rican cultural diversity.

As an educator for over 20 years and as a graduate student of caribbean linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus, I have been struck by the absence of Afro-Puerto Rican characters in children’s literature. This situation has been docu-mented in dulce M. Perez’s dissertation titled “African Heritage in

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cuban Literature for children and Young Adult: A Participatory Study with nersys Felipe and Teresa cardenas.” She had originally planned to conduct her research on Afro-caribbean children’s literature in cuba, dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, but was not able to carry out her original design. She notes,

The scarcity of literature for children and young adults that portrays African heritage in the dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, however, deterred me. cuba has a rich literary tradition, and I discovered more writers there who were addressing the themes in which I was interested.

This “silencing” of the Afro-Puerto Rican voice has been the focus of my dissertation research and the presentations I offer to educators and undergraduate students of the English BA Program at the University of Puerto Rico in Humacao. My goal is to create awareness of the lack of culturally relevant literature that represents the diversity within Puerto Rico and the caribbean.

Identifying books that portray Afro-Puerto Rican characters has been a challenging task. There is an absence of documentation of the history and develop-ment of Puerto Rican literature. The only book published that records the development of Puerto Rican children’s literature was published 27 years ago by Flor Piñero de Rivera and is titled A Century of Puerto Rican Children’s Literature. Another resource that has facilitated the iden-tification of Afro-Puerto Rican children’s books has been Anansesem, the e-zine administered by Summer Edwards (www.anansesem.com). This website has a bookstore section powered by Amazon that provides titles of carib-bean children’s books by country. Through this bookstore, I was able to identify many of the Afro-Puerto Rican books I use at present for my research.

The books I have identified mostly fall within the folk-loric or historical genre. One of the first ones I read was Fernando Picó’s picture book The Red Comb. This book was originally published in a collection of short stories written in Spanish. It takes place in 19th century Puerto Rico and features a runaway slave who is being pursued by a bounty hunter. A young girl, with the guidance of a neighbor, helps the slave obtain her freedom. Another slave story, Carabarí, is part of the collection of cayetano coll y Toste. This legend presents the story of a runaway slave who never gave up until he obtained his freedom. Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos also has a retelling of this Afro-Puerto Rican legend. More contemporary books that present Afro-Puerto Rican characters are Ana Lydia Vega’s picture book En la Bahía de Jobos: Celita y el Mangle Zapatero and Eric Velásquez’s Grand-ma’s Records. In Vega’s book, there are two plots that intertwine. The first plot line develops in contemporary times. An Afro-Puerto Rican girl



and her grandfather travel through a mangrove. As they do, the second plot line appears as the grandfather tells the story of an African slave that escaped from his master to gain his freedom. Grandma’s Records deals with the relationship of a young Afro-Puerto Rican boy in new York and his grandmother. While visiting his grandmoth-er’s apartment, he learns to value the salsa music she greatly enjoys. This biographical picture book has a prequel titled Grandma’s Gift.

In 2001, carmen Bernier-Grand published a novel titled In the Shade of the Nispero Tree that has an Afro-Puerto Rican character. The story, set in the southern town of Ponce, revolves around the friendship of two girls named Teresa and Ana. The issue of prejudice due to skin color is presented through Teresa’s mother’s rejection of Ana. Books with Afro-Puerto Rican charac-ters are very limited, as my research indicates. I have focused my work on attempting to provide Puerto Rican children with a more balanced view of their cultural heritage. While many books provide the vicarious experience that should be enjoyed in literature, almost no books provide

Puerto Rican children with a reflection of their Afro-Puerto Rican heritage.

Realization on my part of this gap in the liter-ature was the beginning of the creative project I am pursuing as part of my dissertation work. What started as an interest in writing a simple children’s story developed into the collection of short stories titled Coquíes, Drums and Dreams. The stories are fairy tale adaptations that present Afro-Puerto Rican characters within 19th century Puerto Rico. In the first stages of writing these stories, Anansesem gave me the opportunity to publish the short story Adannaya’s Sugar, a fairy tale adaptation that is part of this collection. One of the goals of my short story collection is to provide children with stories that deal with Afro-Puerto Rican characters while presenting the social and cultural reality of Puerto Rico at the threshold of the abolition of slavery. Most of the stories of the collection are inspired by fairy tales. The titles of the other seven short stories are:

• The Ungrateful Coquí (inspired by The Frog Prince)

• Amapola’s Dream (inspired by Sleeping Beauty)

• Fat Girl (inspired by the legend La Encantá

• Anything, but Black (inspired by Rapunzel)

• Roberto and Julia Eva (inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet)

• Shadows and Masks (inspired by Beauty and the Beast)

• Upon a Star (inspired by Little Red Riding Hood)

Puerto Rican children’s stories must move beyond the traditional folkloric representation of the island. contemporary works must be incorpo-rated. I have also written several short stories set in a contemporary setting as part of this creative process. Anansesem published the short story dancing Bomba that is about a young Puerto Rican girl who travels to Puerto Rico to visit her grandmother. during this visit, she embraces her Afro-Puerto Rican roots through her newly

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discovered love for the African rhythms of bomba and for carnival.

Puerto Rican literature has provided its young readers with memorable stories that are still cher-ished by contemporary readers. numerous writers continue to provide beautiful tales inspired by our coquí and the indigenous heritage of the Taínos, but the stories about marginalized groups must be added to these titles. Afro-Puerto Rican literature is needed so that our young readers can enjoy the rich heritage of the African legacy of this caribbean island.

Acknowledgements:I would like to thank dr. Alicia Pousada of

the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus for her support in this creative project and for chairing the dissertation committee. I also am grateful to dr. Alma Simounet and dr. nicholas for being part of this committee.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksAcevedo, Ari. Juan Bobo Sends the Pig to Mass.

Atlanta: August House, 2008. Print.Bernier-Grand. Juan Bobo: Four Folktales from

Puerto Rico. new York: Harpercollins, 1995. Print.

—. In the Shade of the Nispero Tree. new York: Orchard Books, 1999. Print.

coll y Toste, cayetano. Puerto Rican Tales: Legends of Spanish Colonial Times. Trans.

Jose Ramirez Rivera. San Juan: Ediciones Libero, 1980. Print.

de Jesus Paolicelli, Marisa. There’s a Coqui in My Shoe. San Juan: chi chi Rodriguez Books, 2007. Print.

Gonzalez, Lucia. The Storyteller’s Candle. San Francisco: children’s Book Press, 2008. Print.

Hooper, nancy. Everywhere Coquis! Baltimore: Omni Arts Publishing, 2003. Print.

Jaffe, nina. The Golden Flower: A Taino Myth from Puerto Rico. San Juan: Arte Publico, 2005. Print.

delacre, Lulu. Rafi and Rosi. new York: Rayo, 2005. Print.

—. Rafi and Rosi: Carnival. new York: Rayo, 2006. Print.

Montes, Marisa. Juan Bobo Goes to Work: A Puerto Rican Folktale. new York: Rayo, 2000. Print.

—. Juan Bobo Goes Up and Down the Hill: A Puerto Rican Folktale. Washington, dc: Hampton-Brown, 2000. Print.

Murray chiesa, Walter. Corasi. San Juan: Edito-rial Universidad de Puerto Rico. 2009. Print.

Pico, Fernando. The Red Comb. new York: Troll communications, 1998. Print.

Rodriguez, Ed. Kiki Koki, The Enchanted Legend of the Coqui Frog. california: IdeaRworks, 2010. Print.

Rohmer: Harriet. Atariba and Niguayona: A Story from the Taino People of Puerto Rico. new York: Scholastics. 1998. Print.

Troutman Plenn, doris. The Green Frog. Whit-fish MT: Literary Licensing, 2012. Print.

Vega, Ana Lydia. En la Bahia de Jobos: Celita y el Mangle Zapatero. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2004.

Velasquez, Eric. Grandma’s Records. new York: Walker Publishing company, 2004. Print.

—. Grandma’s Gift. new York: Walker Publishing company, 2013. Print.

Secondary SourcesPerez castillo, dulce Maria. African Heri-

tage in cuban Literature for children and Young Adults: A Participatory Study with nerys Felipe and Teresa cardenas. diss. The University of San Francisco, 2007. Print.

Piñero de Rivera, Flor. Un Siglo de Literatura Infantil Puertorriqueña [A century of

Puerto Rican children’s Literature]. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1987. Print.


I am a science writer working as curator of scientific content for ¿Cómo ves? magazine, a science monthly published by the national Autonomous University of Mèxico (www.comoves.

unam.mx). next december, with the publication of our 181st issue, we will celebrate fifteen years on the market. Our readership is varied. Aimed originally at high school and college students, the magazine is also read by teachers, scientists, white-collar workers , retirees, and at least one prison inmate (more on that later). Our contributors are science communicators, journalists, researchers, and teachers. A university publication might be tempted to pander to the academic community surrounding it or to university authori-ties, but ¿Cómo ves? is fully reader-oriented. We want our readers to stay with us and we want them to come back. This means that we will modify originals as necessary in order to make them not only scientifically rigorous, which would suffice to make the end product acceptable to academics, but also clear and pleasant to read. This is more easily said than done: what is a pleasant read?

Stor

ytel

ling

and

Met

apho

r in

Scie

nce

Com

mun

icat

ion

by SERGIO DE RéGULES

Sergio de Régules is a science writer and editor of scientific content for ¿Cómo ves? magazine, a science monthly published by the National

Autonomous University of Mexico (www.comoves.unam.mx). He has written

weekly columns in various media, as well as a monthly column in the journals

Peripatetics and Milenio Diario. He lectures on popular science, creates and organizes exhibitions. His books include

Involuntary (Pangea, 1992) The Sun Died Laughing (Pangea, 1997), Quantum Stories (DNA, 2000) and Saturn’s Ears

(Polity Press, 2003).

52.3 – 2014 | 87IBBY.ORG

STORYTELLInG And METAPHOR In ScIEncE cOMMUnIcATIOn

Storytelling EvolvesI am reading a document published by the US department of defense. It is titled The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures, and it aims at providing government employees with guidelines to appropriate conduct. I know, it sounds awful. You might think it is a list of rules and regulations to learn by rote, or a handbook of inappropriate responses in a zillion different circumstances, catalogued by type of violation. But it isn´t that at all. It’s actually fun to read. The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures is a collection of stories; real stories about real government employees: the woman who took private business calls through her phone number in the Pentagon, the guy who channeled government contracts to his brother’s company and accepted time with escort girls as a kickback. The EEF is a sampler of human turpitude that would make a novelist looking for ideas drool.

The US department of defense is on to something and that something is this: if you want information to really sink home, deliver it in the form of narrative. A narrative is a tale in which people, or characters identifi-able as people, vie with each other in order to achieve opposing goals. In the end the goals are achieved, or not, but something or someone is changed in the process. There is something about information delivered as narra-tive that keeps us reading, holding our breath, and rooting for a particular ending to the story. It’s primal.

Scientists such as Leda cosmides and John Tooby argue that storytelling evolved in our species as a way of passing on important information about the ways of the world to new generations, or as a way of gleaning from the environment information that is not prewired in the brain. I like to think of stories as a way of downloading apps and updates to the basic programming of the brain, although I know this metaphor will not be palatable to everyone. nature has provided us with a passion for stories in the same way it has provided us with yearn-ings, cravings, hunger, and sex drive: to get us to seek what is useful for our survival. And so the human brain is a sucker for stories generally, whether they contain information that is useful or not.

This is what the department of defense is trying to do with the Encyclopaedia of Ethical Failures. The message is too important to entrust to traditional lists and tables and regular encyclopedia entries. The narrative form is much more potent because it is simply the most natural way for the human mind to absorb information. Lists of facts have to be forced into the brain; stories are sucked in like oxygen into air-starved lungs. Which is why, when the message has to do with a complex subject such as science, the ideal mode of communication is the narrative form.

Science as a Source for the StorytellerThe results and formulas we are taught in school are only the end



products of a protracted and convoluted process called science. At ¿Cómo ves? we emphasize the process without neglecting the results. It is mostly true that science is based on observation and experiment, but these have to be planned and performed following strict, formalized, protocols to guarantee objectivity (or as much objectivity as possible), reproducibility, and consistency. Once the data are in, the team of scientists (scientists almost always work in teams) has to interpret them, that is, build a coherent story out of them. Then the research has to be published, or offered for social validation. It behooves the researchers to justify both their methods and their interpre-tation of the data. Their peers will then try to find fault with the research. If they can’t, then they may start quoting it and using it in their own work; the research has been validated, at least for the moment.

But what happens when experiments fail, or when the only way to interpret them goes against everything we know about the Universe? How are scientific disputes solved? What if they cannot be solved? How does a scientist procure funds for his or her research? This is a simplified version of the process called science, but it may be enough to show that there is plenty of fodder for storytelling beyond simply explaining the results of science.

At ¿Cómo ves?, we urge our authors to seek every opportunity to tell a good story.

The Prometheus Tree: An ExampleFor the August, 2012 issue of ¿Cómo ves? I wrote about paleoclimatologist donald currey and how he ended up cutting into a very ancient tree in his search of data about the climate of the past. I start with a personal anecdote: “At the foot of Grasshopper Hill in chapultepec Forest there is a fragrant and beautiful park smack in the middle of Mèxico city: “The park is home to a very Mexican tree species, the ahuehuete, known for its protracted lifespan. Some of the ahuehu-etes in chapultepec have their age marked with paint on the trunk —400 years, 500, 600… The most ancient of these trees were there before the foundation of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.” The text continues: “I discovered the labels on the trees a few years ago, while strolling in the shade of the old ahuehuetes. I knew that the age of some tree species is determined by counting the growth rings in a cross section of the tree trunk. How could the age of the chapultepec trees be calculated without cutting them down?” I then go on to explain how it is done using a special drill to extract a core from the trunk and then counting the tree rings. The personal anecdote is not gratuitous. It serves the purpose of setting the stage for the story of donald currey and a bristlecone pine tree called Prometheus. This is the part where currey first runs into trouble: “donald currey [went] to nevada, at the center of the bristlecone habitat. There the young scien-tist found what he was looking for in a grove of wondrously old-looking pine trees growing at the edge of a deep valley […] The young man chose the oldest-looking tree, sank his drill into the trunk, and began to turn the crank. Crick, crick, crick went the drill as it bit deeper and deeper into the wood of the Methuselah of trees. Crick, crick… CRACK! The crank snapped in currey’s hand […] Without a spare drill and with the academic calendar against him […], currey went to the Forest Service for help.” There, currey asks permission to cut down the tree, or perhaps somebody in the Forest Service suggests this drastic solution. The problem? After counting

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the tree rings currey realizes that he has killed the most ancient organism then known. Soon the press finds out and all hell breaks lose for currey. It is a riveting story. It also serves as a vehicle for at least three different kinds of ideas from scien-tific culture: how tree rings are related to ancient climates (scientific results, or facts), how scien-tists know it (the epistemology of science), and the pressure of publishing in science (science as a human endeavor and a way of life).

However, a story only works if the science is a crucial part of the conflict or the outcome, as in this case. In ¿Cómo ves? we find that wholly ficti-tious stories, or stories used only as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, work less well than narratives where the science is an important part of what happens to the characters.

Seven-League BootsMany scientists are wary of metaphors. They consider them vague and confusing, even dangerous. For these scientists metaphors are little more than a distraction, a way of speaking indirectly. And scientists hate to speak indirectly. For poets, writers, linguists, and cognitive scien-tists, however, metaphors are much more than this. A current trend of thought, perhaps initi-ated by cognitive linguist George Lakoff and

philosohper Mark Johnson in their book Meta-phors We Live By (1980), views metaphors as handles for the mind. new ideas and concepts are slippery, but if they connect with familiar ideas by way of metaphor, the mind can grasp them. A metaphor is a way of using the structure of a known idea as scaffolding for constructing a novel one. For Lakoff and Johnson, the primary function of metaphor is understanding. And for Laura Otis, author of Literature And Science in the Nineteenth Century, “metaphor plays a key role in original thought.”

More important to science writers, metaphors are a powerful and concise way of conveying very precise ideas, like covering great distances with only a few strides, a sort of cognitive seven-leagues boots.

Recently I showed my high school students a stroboscope, a contraption they are only familiar with in the context of a party. I took the flashlight-like device out of its box, pulled the curtains, darkened the classroom, and turned on a fan. It started whirring, the blades going at full speed. Then I trained the strobe light on the blades. A stroboscope emits bright flashes of light at a controlled frequency. By carefully tweaking the frequency I made the blades of the fan appear to stand still while the motor went on whirring and the air kept on blowing. I asked what was happening. The kids understood what was going on, at least vaguely, but they were hard-pressed for eloquent words to describe it. “When you take a long-exposition picture, movements show as continuous blurs or lines,” I said. They knew this, of course: “But if you use a strobe light you can turn these blurs and lines into individual static images of the same object at different points in time. So this contraption is, in essence, a time slicer.” Although the students had more or less understood the principle of the thing, the sudden appearance of metaphor fired their minds and lit up their faces. The metaphor crystallized the concept. The whole structure of the idea of a slicer (think ham slicer) was grafted onto the idea of a strobe light. This suggested other ideas: time as a substance that can be sliced, time as something we can exert some control over, perceiving things we would otherwise have no access to. Metaphors



are like musical sounds: they have higher harmonics, they echo in the mind.

Good WillThere is a property of metaphors I find extremely intriguing, as well as very useful in my line of work. A metaphor, taken literally, is nonsense (a time slicer?). A metaphor in itself contains very little information in the mundane sense of the mathematical theory of information. But if the writer has earned the confidence and good will of his or her reader,

the reader will actually work very hard to make sense of the writer’s words. The metaphor will fall on fertile soil and a tree of concepts will bloom in the reader’s mind, a tree of concepts that were already there. A metaphor uses what is already in the reader’s mind (their experience, the culture they share with the writer, their personal taste) to actually put new ideas in it. So, in a sense, metaphor is a way of compressing information.

There is even more to metaphor. The human brain loves puzzles and enigmas. This is perhaps a throwback from the days when solving problems and finding relation-ships between the data of experience was a matter of life and death. The brain rewards us with waves of pleasure when we accomplish acts that promote our survival or our reproduction. There are pleasures associated with eating and sex, but there is also the pleasure of understanding. It is the adrenaline rush of the eureka! moment. Putting two and two together to decipher metaphors gives the reader a thrill. Screenwriter Andrew Stanton (of Pixar fame) said in his TEd talk (www.ted.com): “People are willing to work for their meal; they just don’t want to know it.” One

way of granting our readers this secret pleasure is offering them stories and metaphors to work on. If we do this, they will stay with us. Better yet: they will come back.

A Special ReaderA couple of years ago a very strange letter arrived at ¿Cómo ves? head-quarters. It was handwritten on a creased piece of paper and it had been mailed from a Mexican prison. Estrella Burgos, our editor-in-chief, read us the letter. The author, who must remain anonymous, recounted how he was unfairly apprehended during a police raid in a bar and sentenced to prison. One day he got hold of an issue of our magazine. He read it and was hooked. He told us how his new interest in science had sustained him over the years. We cannot hope to have the same effect on other readers, of course, but this wonderful letter gave us a thrilling sense of the possibilities.


A few years ago in Bolivia, there only existed books for chil-dren and books for adults. It was not possible to think of any books for young adults. It was almost a barren territory.

At that time I wrote an article about Bolivian children’s literature written in Bolivia: “country Survey: Bolivia,” which was published by Bookbird. It may be said that Bolivian books, which could be read by young adults were not written for them; they didn’t relate to their problems and interests.

The current scenario is different. A significant group of writers has begun to direct their writings to young adults and their produc-tion is not only more abundant than literature for younger children, but also the issues they address are more meaningful for the life of young adults, they are new and questioning, and include topics such as military dictatorships, migration, gangs, bullying.

I will briefly go over some of them: La sonrisa cortada [The cut Smile] by Giggia Talarico, a tale told by a teenage girl inter-spersed with the journal or memory book of another adolescent.

Young Adult Literature

in Bolivia

by GABY VALLEjO CANEDO

Gaby Vallejo Canedo is a Bolivian Teacher of Literature and Spanish, and a Graduate in Education. She is the writer of several novels, research articles, and tales for adults and books for children. She lectures on children’s books and

women’s writing. She is Director of the Thuruchapitas Library and President of

IBBY-Bolivia.


YOUnG AdULT LITERATURE In BOLIVIA

They both feel uncomfortable in the world of adults: the perpetual state of family conflict, the perspective of the adult world as ugly, insipid, dark, full of enigmas and bizarre secrets, the fear of becoming an adult like them ends when the truth hidden for years emerges. Because of telling the truth, “volvió la respiración y la esper-anza” [breathing and hope returned], said one of them. There are some very sad pages, linked to politics during times of dictatorship. In the end, the spiritual growth of both young people takes place. The language throughout the whole novel is completely youthful and informal.

Another book, El abrigo de Matilde y otros cuentos en tiempo de dictadura [Matilde’s coat and Other Stories from Times of dictatorship] by carlos Azurduy, is also linked to the times of military dictatorship in Bolivia. These are tales where the main characters are all children, either victims of the repression, vanishings, exile, or death. With the key idea of “as long as stories are told and heard, memories will live on,” the author wants to show the suffering of children during dictatorships to young adults of today. Some-times, important historical details are included. The stories are all very well written and most of

them have a shocking ending. Absent parents, the poverty in Bolivia,

which originates a constant migration, and the abandonment of children inspired carlos Vera to write the novel for young adults El vuelo del murcielago Barba de Pétalo [The Flight of the Petal Beard Bat]. What’s original about this tale is that the child characters, who were at first made miserable by their family situation, meet a young researcher studying the life of bats; this allows them to relate their situation of victims of migra-tion with the situation of the bat which is forced to migrate because of the climatic changes. At times, the author engages in word games; at other times, he stops to analyze the serious emotional situation lived by young adults.

Tatuaje Mayor [The Greatest Tattoo], one of my young adult novels, centers on the generation gap between a young fifteen year old girl and her grandmother. The young girl finds her grand-mother’s journal on the day of her death and the dialogue begins, a dialogue which opposes ways of life, situations, decisions, all of them related to the main topics: love, loneliness, death. The connection of the main characters to gangs, tattoos, graffiti and drugs, makes the reading appealing for young adults.

Roger Otero writes a cinematographic novel, Bullying, about harassment in schools, attaining an excellent narrative tension in each chapter. Four violent teenagers use the Internet to show films about harassment in a prestigious school, installing fear among students, teachers and especially in the principal. To counter this situ-ation, a young girl faces the band, smartly orga-nizes the exposure of the bullying, and heals the secret wounds left by the rape and murder of her mother. This novel, despite all her suffering, includes the topic of love.

Fernando canedo offers horror stories orbiting around seven black cats. The first page of each story has quotations from famous writers and alluring graphics designs of the fonts, styles, and sizes, which invite one to read and find the relation of the graphics with the story. Siete gatos negros [Seven Black cats] gathers gloomy tales always linked to the appearance of a black cat, a detail drawn from the folk imagery of this

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written for young adults, an extensive novel written by a very young writer, Ana Treviño, Sibelle para Benjamín [Sibelle for Benjamin], does not dwell on family conflicts, or the traces of dictatorships, or the consequences of migration, or drugs, gangs and bullying, which are the main topics of interest for young adults. The young author successfully offers the strangest fantastic stories of gargoyles, eternal witches, mysterious beings, and transformations. Her book has more followers among young adults than most of the more experienced writers, a fact that deserves a further study.

Works Cited

Children’s BooksAzurduy, carlos. El abrigo de Matilde y otros

cuentos en tiempo de dictadura Santa cruz: Grupo Editorial La Hoguera, 2011. Print.

canedo, Fernando. Siete gatos negros. Santa cruz: Grupo Editorial La Hoguera, 2011. Print.

Gurtner, Stefan. El grano verde. Santa cruz: Editorial Amigos del libro, 2004. Print.

Otero, Roger. Bullying. Santa cruz: Grupo Editorial La Hoguera, Santa cruz, 2012. Print.

Talarico Gigia. La sonrisa cortada. Santa cruz: Grupo Editorial La Hoguera, Santa cruz, 2008. Print.

Treviño Ana. Sibelle para Benjamin. Santa cruz: Grafica “JV” Editora, 2012. Print.

Vallejo canedo, Gaby. Tatuaje Mayor. Santa cruz: Editorial Amigos del Libro, Sagitario, 2009. Print.

Vera Vargas, carlos. El vuelo del murciélago Barba de Pétalo, Alfaguara Serie Roja. La Paz, 2009. Print.

animal. Sometimes the tales are spiced with a bit of humor and surprise, and some of them are told in a masterful tone.

Stefan Gurtner tell El grano verde [The Green Grain] from the perspective of a mouse describing the migration of other mice to the city of La Paz. It is a complaint about the abuses that are received by the poor migrant; it presents the struggle for a place to live in, the exclusion of the poor, the strategies of political power, and the dirty mechanisms of electoral campaigns. At first, the narrator uses a curious mechanism: he believes to have heard the tale of the Achaku mouse, which actually is the novel being read. The mice are just like human beings, poor and migrating to the larger cities.

An interesting and curious fact: in contrast with the thematic choice of the authors of stories


Bologna: Fifty Years of Children’s Books from Around the World. By Giorgia Grilli (ed.). Bologna: Bononia UP, 2013. 2 vols. 535 pages; 147 pages. ISBn 978-88-7395-814-7; ISBn 978-88-7395-830-7.

The Bologna children’s Book Fair was first held in 1964, a signifi-cant decade in 20th century history, and also a significant time in the creation and publication of books for children. In the ensuing years, the fair has become a landmark event for all with a professional interest in children’s books. Publishers dominate, as Bologna is primarily a trade fair. The halls are packed with stands displaying books from coun-tries and regions across the globe. Most are commercial: publishers are there to promote their wares, and especially to sell international rights. But it is more than that. The fair has developed into a space where people from many countries and disciplines all get together to talk about their passion for children’s books. Aspiring illustrators and students wander the halls with portfolios under their arms, hoping to meet some publisher who will recognize their talents. Established authors, picture book creators, critics, academics, librarians, media people, all come to take part in or to listen to discussions at the many events during the Fair.

There are stands sponsored by national and international organi-zations and agencies, all featuring books from different regions. The IBBY stand is a core part of the fair, and a place where people come to see some of the best books from around the world in displays such as the Hans christian Andersen Award nominees, the IBBY Honour Books and books for children with disabilities. The International Youth Library from Munich also represents international aspects of children’s books with their displays of publications, which have received the accolade of the Youth Library’s White Ravens. The nami Island Illustration concours stand and presentations are an increas-ingly attractive and important showcase for the best in illustration from around the world, and the winners of two internationally prestigious awards, IBBY’s Hans christian Andersen Awards for writing and for illustration, and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) are announced at the Fair. The Fair’s own Bologna Ragazzi awards recog-nize talented authors and illustrators, and each year a specific country is featured at the Fair as a “guest of honour” in the exhibition space.

To mark the 50 years since the Bologna Book Fair’s inception, a handsome two-volume publication in a slipcase has been produced. The slimmer volume (it is still substantial) is a photographic record of the Fair and its participants over the years. This complements the section at the back of the second volume in which many of those who regularly attend the Fair talk about what the Fair means, or has meant, to them. It is rather a pity that these two sections are not together, because it would have made the volume of articles lighter!

The articles of the second volume are divided into two sections: one charting the development of the Fair, and the second containing essays based on presentations at a conference held in 2013 to mark the Fair’s

Book

s on

Boo

ks

Compiled and edited byCHRISTIANE RAABEand jOCHEN WEBER

Christiane Raabe is the director and jochen Weber is the head of the

language sections of the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany.

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anniversary. One of the remarkable features demonstrated in the opening articles is the extent to which the Book Fair is so evidently part of the city of Bologna; for Bologna, this is no ordinary trade fair, but a cultural event of note. The second and longer group of articles—ambitiously titled 1964-2013: A World History of Children’s Books—discusses books from around the world. The focus is on picturebooks, understandably, as the language of the “picturebook” is an international one, and exposure to so much visual content is a very evident and exciting part of the Fair.

The articles are replete with information charting the history of book-production in countries or regions around the globe. Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the Arab countries are all dealt with as regions, rather than in articles featuring individual countries, although some of the most exciting developments are emerging in these areas. Some European countries—France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain, and Russia—are given separate treatment, though it is a pity that Belgium, one of the coun-tries currently producing some of the best picturebooks, is not a focus here. Africa is treated in two articles, one from English-speaking Africa and the other from French-speaking Africa. Asia is represented, deservedly, by Japan and India, and by korea, the source in recent times of so many outstanding picturebooks. Iran, another emerging source of exciting picturebooks, is covered in a complete article, as is Hebrew literature.

Since the articles are based on talks given at a symposium marking the Fair’s anniversary, it may be that limits were set by who was available to speak. There are some surprising omis-sions and regrettable imbalances: china, Australia, and new Zealand are not represented. And while north-American (mainly US) literature is covered in three informative articles, only a single one is devoted to South America. These caveats do not, however, reflect on the quality of the articles in this volume; rather, they provoke a desire to know more about the regions covered and something of those that are not discussed. The national and regional articles are bookended by an informative piece on crossover litera-ture, and pointing the way ahead, a thoughtful consideration of the future of print and digital picture book publishing.

A bit like the Fair itself, these volumes leave the reader reeling from a welter of information and stimulation. All that is missing is the multi-lingual babble of voices so characteristic of the Bologna Book Fair. They are a valuable record of one of the major events in the world of children’s books, not least, because the articles, in particular, provide an introduc-tion to children’s books in many languages and from many regions. It underlines the wealth and diversity of book production for young readers evident at the Bologna Book Fair. The Fair has played an important part in the promotion of children’s books as serious cultural artifacts: long may it survive and thrive.

Valerie Coghlan, Church of Ireland College of Education


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Kinderliteraturgeschichten: Kinderliteratur und Kinderliteraturgeschich-tsschreibung in Deutschland seit 1945 [Histories of children’s literature: children’s literature and its historiography in Germany since 1945]. By Andrea Weinmann. Series: Kinder- und Jugendkultur, -literatur und -medien. Theorie, Geschichte, Didaktik; 80. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013. 399 pages. ISBn 978-3-631-63727-2.

How was the history of children’s literature written in postwar Germany, both East and West? What were the underpinnings of this historiography, which epistemological, ideological, aesthetic influences shaped the percep-tion of children’s literature on both sides of the iron curtain?

Andrea Weinmann, lecturer at the Institute for children’s Book Research at the University of Frankfurt, pursues a double aim: On the one hand, she proposes to show what the historiography of children’s literature looks like. On the other hand, she intends to develop a “theory of literary historiography” and subsequently put it to the test with her own version of a history of children’s literature.

Having defined her object of study, Weinmann addresses the “funda-mental questions of literary historiography,” most notably: Which over-arching concepts and ways of periodization should shape literary history? In this theoretical part she defines and discusses key methods and concepts (41-95). While selection, categorization, and hierarchical prioritization are procedures central to any historiographical endeavor, the histories of litera-ture ought to be more than literary canons or simple annals. Instead, they should make apparent the forms and forces of literary change and judge the works by the standards of their time. However, our historical vantage point should allow for the identification of “milestones,” which are both innovative and representative (66). Furthermore, Weinmann insists that literary historiographies have to go beyond the literary context to incorpo-rate extraliterary processes. Literature, according to Weinmann, has to be understood both as a symbolic and a social system, and histories of litera-tures have to take into account the interaction between the two. This is all the more relevant for the history of children’s literature since conceptions of childhood and youth vary greatly over time, altering the ways in which literature for children and youth was regarded.

In the second part of her study, Weinmann analyses how different scholars responded to the challenges of writing histories of literature. With this meta-historiography, she sets up the context for her own attempt at writing a history of children’s literature. This section very clearly shows that the historians of literature were well aware of the difficulties their task entailed. They grappled to find adequate ways of conceptualizing and chronologically situating the material, and did not shy away from the central question of what this material should be. They tried to find ways of charting the interactions between the social and the symbolic system. All these reflections remain implicit, however, surfacing mainly in discus-sions surrounding questions of corpus and the meaning and purpose of children’s literature.

The initial stage of writing literary histories was characterized by

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fundamental research, consisting mainly in the collection of data. Social historical perspectives only came to bear on literary historiography in the 1980s. Weinmann cites The History of Children’s Literature by Hans-Heino Ewers (incidentally her supervisor) as an outstanding example of a post-reunification scholarly work. According to her, Ewers succeeds in framing the history of children’s literature in terms of a history of modernization. He understands the transformation of literary themes, forms, and func-tions as expression of social processes of modernization; these processes modify the conceptions of childhood and youth, which in turn change literature. This way, Ewers focuses on processes rather than on rigid period boundaries.

Weinmann’s attempt to meticulously map the methodological and practical difficulties postwar literary historiography has resulted in a rather descriptive and cumulative account. It does have the benefit, however, of uncovering unknown or forgotten facts, of tracing more subtle develop-ments and interactions, and of giving a thorough overview of the main actors and projects both East and West. While the many quotations and extensive footnotes make the reading somewhat laborious, they do give a vivid account of the discussions surrounding the historiography of children’s literature and reveal the difference to the historiography of general literature.

The annex features Weinmann’s own version of a “History of West-German children’s literature since 1945” (295). It is certainly interesting to add a practical part to the theoretical reflections, which represent the core of this study. It does, however, create a hybrid kind of text. Even though Weinmann stays true to her convictions that the social and symbolic systems have to be considered as one and that the history of children’s literature should be written as a history of modernization, there are many redundancies with the theoretical part. It may have been strategically wiser to bring together the results of the first and second sections in a general conclusion and to publish the annex separately as a “new” history of literature, destined for a wider audi-ence. In that case, however, it would be desirable to refine some of the terminology. In the face of a steadily changing society, for example, the unifying term “children’s and youth literature” seems inappropriate, and the heading “contemporary children’s Litera-ture” (329) can hardly encompass current literary trends for all ages.

despite these reservations, Weinmann’s extensive study certainly makes an important contribution to scholarship by documenting and theorizing its own enterprise. A more concise style would have strengthened the argu-ment, but the many challenges of writing a history of children’s literature are abundantly clear.

Ines Galling, International Youth Library, MunichTranslation: Nikola von Merveldt


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Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Transla-tions, Reconsiderations. Ed. Benjamin Lefebvre. Series: Children’s Litera-ture and Culture; 87. new York, London: Routledge, 2013. 223 pages. ISBn 978-0-415-50971-8.

Far from being exceptions, textual transformations rather tend to be the rule in children’s literature. Artistic, ideological, and, last but not least, economic considerations very often lead book publishers and the media industry to opt for adaptations, such as translations, parodies, mashups, sequels, film or computer game versions, as well as transpositions to other genres and media. The present volume assembles eleven contri-butions by scholars from canada, Great Britain, Italy, and the United

States. They explore an international corpus of adapta-tions by asking how generic aspects as well as pedagog-ical, ideological, social, and cultural contexts motivate and influence the aesthetics, contents, and production of textual transformations.

Three essays focus on film adaptations. david Whitley compares the animated films Pocahontas and Princess Mononoke as filmic adaptations of two narratives of origin about the conflict between nature and settlement or industrialization. He analyses how the two films employ opposing strategies to appropriate cultural otherness for Western liberal pluralism on the one hand or to respect it within a polycentric multicultural framework on the other. Emily Somer describes the culturally determined contradictions in Takahata Isao’s anime version of the canadian classic Anne of Green Gables, Akage no An. The anime attempts to reconcile the discrepancy between the restrained language of the polite anime protagonist with the emotional actions of her novel counterpart on the visual level by translating Anne’s exuberance into over-flowing floral background illustrations. Benjamin Lefe-bvre’s comparison of two television adaptations of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie shows that the

TV versions cater to their audiences by adapting the original in respect to gender and race and simplifying the historical conflict.

Malini Roy looks at graphic novels by campfire Press (new delhi), which—for commercial reasons—translate and extend the postco-lonial, misogynic, racist ideology of the generally English originals into the graphic idiom rather than using the popular mass medium to develop new perspectives for the younger generation. Hanh nguyen considers English translations of orally transmitted Vietnamese folk-tales for third-generation immigrants to the United States. Based on the anthologies Two Cakes Fit for a King and Dragon Prince, he argues that these adaptations play an important role in passing on the Vietnamese cultural heritage to young expatriates. Monika Woźniak interprets the transformations of some of charles Perrault’s fairytales in Polish

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translations as results of cultural and social transfers: Products of French absolutist courtly culture, the tales had to be adapted to the rural culture of Poland. Laura Tosi analyses how young-adult prose adaptations of Shakespeare’s dramas transform plot, character, and point of view. Lisa Migo traces the reception of the long selling girl book series chalet School by Elinor M. Brent-dyer in the blogosphere. The Web fan club Chaletian Bulletin Board brings the fictional characters back to life and allows for interactive fanfiction sequels to the original text. drawing on queer theory, nat Hurley interprets the homosexual transformations of motifs from Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, or The Wizard of Oz in Alan Moore’s and Melinda Gebbie’s The Lost Girls. In a comparative study, Andrea Mckenzie demonstrates how international book covers of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables shape the reading and reflect the specific cultural, historic, and medial contexts of the importing country across a whole century. Maria nikolajeva defines structural, narrative and aesthetic criteria for multivolume fiction. Elaborating on the differences between series and sequel, she shows, for example, how david Benedictus’s Return to Hundred Acre Wood misunderstands A. A. Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh and its sequel The House at Pooh Corner as a series, which it further extends with trite episodes.

Instead of attempting to present an all-encompassing study of textual transformations, the collected volume offers insightful case studies of selected works and their transformations into other genres, media, languages, cultures, and times. Given this heterogeneity, it is not surprising that the analytic depth varies. Overall, the interdisciplinary, international, and polythematic approach of this volume offers much intellectual stimulation for further explorations of this field.

Jutta Reusch, International Youth Library, MunichTranslation: Nikola von Merveldt

Children’s Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation. By Rebecca knuth. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2012. IX pages, 209 pages. ISBn 978-0-8108-8516-5

In her new book, Children’s Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation, Library Science professor Rebecca knuth moves away from a topic she knows well, the threatened state of libraries, to take up a very different one: the history of British children’s literature. knuth’s goal is to give readers an overview of children’s literature in Britain. She brings to her work great enthusiasm for her subject matter and a familiarity with a wide range of texts. Taking on more than 50 authors and more than 250 years of literary history, knuth approaches this large body of material chronologically; she begins with very early works, such as John newbery’s The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765), and ends off with J.k. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. different periods are broken down according to their defining themes. Her


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discussion of nineteenth-century literature is, for example, organized by topics which include: “Socialization: Loyalty, duty and Self-Sacrifice” and “creating Manliness and the Boy Hero.”

It is important to note that this book is not aimed at audiences well versed in recent work on literature for young readers. Instead, it offers readers unfamiliar with several decades of scholarship on literature for young people an introductory overview of the field. Whereas readers with knowledge of the scholarly study of literature for young people will not need to be reminded that “values and cultural rituals portrayed to children in books served ideological purposes” (11), this message may well be of interest to the reader who is new to the critical analysis of

children’s literature and in search of a quickly moving introduction. While knuth does demonstrate her own familiarity with important works of scholarship on chil-dren’s literature, she tends to quote authorities on different authors or texts and then move on. She does not pause to engage closely with the arguments of other scholars nor does she develop readings of her own.

Some of the central claims that knuth makes in the book are less than novel. discussing her research on chil-dren’s literature, she outlines one of her major findings: “I found that children’s books contribute to the develop-ment of character and, as well, to an ethos and national identity—in the case of Britain, the nebulous thing called Englishness” (vii). It’s a valid point but it is not a new one. Other points put forward by knuth are likely to raise eyebrows. She makes some sweeping claims about the historical periods she covers. She argues, for instance, that “dickens’s compelling child characters were created out of an earnest desire to counter the emotional apathy that plagued Victorian England” (33). She goes on to describe the Victorians and Edwardians as an “emotion-ally locked-down population” (89), a broad generalization that is neither supported nor fully elucidated by knuth. Some of knuth’s arguments are hard to follow. As part of a discussion of children’s literature written after the First

World War, she proposes that, after the war, “the grip of ideology on children’s literature loosened” (115)—something that informed readers of, for example, the c.S. Lewis’ Narnia series are likely to balk at.

It should also be noted that this is not a book for literary critics, who will find little in it by way of discussion of literary technique or of quota-tion of the primary texts. knuth does offer a lot of biographical infor-mation about the many authors she treats but she says almost nothing about the literary techniques they employ. As knuth explains in her preface, in place of a narrow literary or historical study, she hopes to offer readers “a cosmography of the universe of British children’s litera-ture and a representation of its main features and effects as the genre has emerged over time” (viii).

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More of a survey than a study, the book’s primary strength is knuth’s very open expression of her passion for particular books and for the imagined Englands they bring into being. describing herself as a “raging Anglophile” (vi), knuth shares her experiences as an American reader of British literature and makes some engaging statements about the expe-rience of coming to know a version of England brought into being by its literature. knuth doesn’t hesitate to write poetically about her topic, declaring for instance, that “Folklore carries truth about what makes us human; it is distilled wisdom, rife with motifs and characters that have survived the crucible of time” (2). Later in the book, she proposes, “The cauldron of children’s literature holds a hearty brew that is instrumental in building character and shaping identity “(160). clearly, this is a book by an author who is very passionate about children’s literature and about the cultural work it has done and continues to do. This passion is knuth’s book’s most notable strength.

Vanessa Warne, University of Manitoba

Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (1574 - 2010). By Ben Hellman. Series: Russian History and culture; 13. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 588 pages. ISBn 978-90-04-25637-8.

Following his survey of Soviet children’s literature in Swedish (Barn- och ungdomsboken i Sovjetryssland. Från oktoberrevolutionen 1917 till perestro-jkan 1986 von 1991) and his article on Russian children’s literature in Peter Hunt’s International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (2004), Ben Hellman now offers the most extensive English-language history of Russian children’s literature to date. Spanning 588 pages and covering almost five centuries, it is a huge accomplishment in several respects. Previous overviews of Russian children’s literature focused on specific time periods (such as Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, 2008, edited by Marina Balina, which looks at the twentieth century) or were simply not available in English (such as the seminal work by Irina Arzamasceva Detskaja literatura, 2009/2012).

In the twelve chapters of the present study, Hellman chronologically works his way through the centuries of children’s literature. not surpris-ingly, the twentieth century takes up the lion’s share since it witnessed the strongest development and unfolding of children’s literature. Like general Russian literary histories, Hellman structures his narrative according to literary periods up to the October Revolution (Romanticism, Realism etc.). For the Soviet decades, he shifts to a political framework, consid-ering literary developments against the backdrop of political situations of the Soviet Union (Stalinism, khrushchev Thaw). doing so, he continues the tradition of conceptualizing the history of twentieth-century Russian literature(s) as an interaction between literature, ideology, and political doctrine.


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Within the chapters, Hellman presents key figures and works of the respective period (e.g. Samuil Marshak, Lev kassil, Antony Pogorelsky’s The Black Hen), introduces the most important genres (especially poetry for children, but also fairytales, nonfiction and others), features popular protagonists like cheburashka or Buratino, and highlights recurring motifs specific to literary periods, such as the war or the praise of labor. Beyond that, he guides readers through the thickets of journals and magazines for children, which—unlike in most countries of Western Europe—build on a long tradition and play an important role in Russian and Soviet children’s literature. Hellman succeeds in demonstrating the significance of this publishing format by naming prominent editors and tracing back the careers of many famous children’s book authors to publications in children’s journals and magazines.

Hellman also considers the many forgotten female authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and underlines their considerable contribution to the devel-opment of children’s literature. He also acknowledges foreign influences and stresses the importance of trans-lations and adaptations of international titles and subject matters, including Alexey Tolstoy’s Pinocchio-adaption Buratino, the early twentieth-century Nat-Pinkerton dime novels, the work of Astrid Lindgren, especially her most popular work in Russia, Karlsson-on-the-Roof. Finally, he keeps drawing attention to important developments of the children’s book publishing industry.

Adopting the usual pattern of histories of children’s literature, Hellman begins his narrative with the publica-tion of primers and the first “literary” titles that were read by children, even if not specifically addressed to them. This allows him to quote the great masters of Russian literature, such as Alexander Pushkin, the Russian Symbolists, or Anton chekhov. At times it almost seems as though Hellman wanted to demonstrate which adult fiction writers also wrote for children. This crosswriting may be due to the fact that individual artists or entire periods paid tribute to an aesthetic of childlike language and perspective, such as the literary primitivism of the

Russian avant-garde (futurism, OBERIU). Hellman also draws on the generally better-known events of Soviet adult literature, such as the scandal surrounding the tamizdat of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or Joseph Brodsky’s parasitism trial, to contextualize similar struggles and debates in the realm of children’s literature.

The twentieth century naturally dominates this impressive opus magnum. Hellman explains the decades between 1890 and 1968 in great detail. Moreover, he knows how to engage his readers by tracing the literary debates surrounding the true vocation of children’s literature in the days of communism (for example at the All-Union conference on children’s Literature, 1952).

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In contrast to the elaborate chapters on Soviet literature and the Perestroika period, the chapter on post-communist children’s literature (1991-2010) comprises merely eight pages. This may in part be due to the fact that the children’s book publishing industry had to reinvent itself and that the production did remain in fact limited. In part, it simply seems too early to define clear trends or developments of the latest Russian literature for children.

Hellman’s main focus is on narrative children’s literature. Illustration and the picture book genre only find occasional mention, for example in context with the word-text experiments of the 1920s Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Lebedev or in conjunction with big names of the international art scene, such as Ilya kabakov. children’s theatre, a highly popular genre in Russia with important playwrights such as Evgeny Shvarc, is largely neglected. And even though the children’s literature of other Soviet Union Republics does not qualify as “Russian,” but rather as Lithuanian, Georgian, or Ukranian, it would have been interesting to have at least a brief section on the hegemony of Russian-language chil-dren’s literature and its Soviet Republican counterparts.

Overall, Ben Hellman’s clearly structured and highly readable history of Russian children’s literature offers a rich and insightful overview and allows a wide audience to discover this fascinating literature.

Katja Wiebe, International Youth Library, MunichTranslation: Nikola von Merveldt

Author Enrique Lara has written a wide variety of

whimsical and unique children’s books, including the

two reviewed here. The lovely book Hojas, co-created

with Luis García, portrays the passage of time through

images of a tree seen through a child’s bedroom win-

dow. Its meticulous clay illustrations and simple yet

elegant text tell the story of a child who watches the

seasons change the tree, and who delights in the tiny

daily miracles of life therein. The story “Me gustan las

vacas” heads in an entirely different path, wherein a

child narrator describes all the reasons why cows are

his favorite animal. Children and adults alike will enjoy

the colorful illustrations and exploration of concepts

the book offers, such as why keeping a pet cow in the

house might be a challenge. The publisher includes

a signature tongue-in-cheek postscript in each book,

which offers an insider’s perspective to publishing for

both children and adults alike.

Deena Hinshaw

Enrique Lara

Hojas [Leaves]

Bogotá: Editorial GatoMalo, 2005

32 p. ISBn: 958-33-7437-7 (Picturebook, ages 3+)

B

ogoTá

c

o l U m Bia2005


The Hans Christian Andersen Awards: The Jury MeetingThe meeting took place in the splendid castle, Schloss Blutenburg, that is the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany a week before the 2014 Bologna children’s Book Fair. With a lot of plan-ning and help from staff at the library, the 13 members of the jury finally sat down and discussed the candidates for the 2014 Awards. Although not all of the jury had met each other before, the atmo-sphere was very convivial. during the previous months the jury members had “met” in cyberspace by using the specially set up and password protected blog.

The working weekend started with the opening of the new IYL picture-book exhibition Knuffle Bunny Meets Rosa Parks curated by claudia Söffner from prize-winning picture books from the recently acquired Lawrence R. Sipe collection. Two U.S. artists with very different styles, christopher Myers and david Wiesner, conducted a conversation moderated by Junko Yokota about their work.

Over the next two days all the candidates were discussed by the jury; on Saturday it was the authors and on Sunday the illustrators. The books and dossiers that had been submitted by the national Sections in support of their candidates were on hand to re-visit and sometimes look at in a new light. The discussions were serious and intense and the evenings spent together for dinner were welcome spaces for relaxation.

The jury was led by jury president María Jesús Gil from Spain. The members of the jury were Anastasia Arkhipova illustrator, chair of the board of the Association of Moscow Book Illustrators and designers, Moscow, Russia; Fanuel Hanan diaz editor, author and researcher, caracas, Venezuela; Sabine Fuchs university lecturer in children’s literature, Graz, Austria; Sang-Wook kim Professor in children’s literature at the chuncheon national University of Education, Seoul, korea; Enrique Pérez díaz author and publisher, Havana, cuba; deborah Soria book-seller and promoter of children’s

Focu

s IB

BY

Compiled and edited byELIZABETH PAGE

Elizabeth Page is IBBY's Executive Director

The 2014 IBBY Awards

The 2014 Jury in discussion at the International Youth Library.

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literature, Rome, Italy; Susan M. Stan Professor of children’s literature at the central Michigan University, USA; Sahar Tarhandeh indepen-dent researcher in children’s literature, freelance graphic designer and art director, Tehran, Iran; Erik Titusson publisher and former director of the ALMA, Stockholm, Sweden; Ayfer Gürdal Ünal writer, critic, and lecturer at the Bhospho-rous University, Istanbul, Turkey. Former IBBY Vice President Elda nogueira (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and IBBY Executive director Liz Page were ex officio Jury members.

On Monday, 17 March 2014 a press release naming the twelve candidates on the shortlist was sent around the world. The author shortlist comprised Ted van Leishout from the nether-lands; Houshang Moradi kermani from Iran; Mirjam Pressler from Germany; nahoko Uehashi from Japan; Renate Welsh from Austria; and, Jacqueline Woodson from the USA. The six short-listed illustrators are Rotraut Susanne Berner from Germany; John Burningham from the Uk; Eva Lindström from Sweden; Roger Mello from Brazil; François Place from France; and, Øyvind Torseter from norway.

The big moment came at the IBBY press conference at the Bologna children’s Book Fair a week later on Monday, 24 March. Jury President María Jesús Gil gave the long-awaited announce-ment that the winners of the Hans christian Andersen Awards for 2014 were nahoko Uehashi from Japan for her writing and Roger Mello from Brazil for his illustrations.

The IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Awards: The Jury Meeting The 2014 Jury met in Istanbul, Turkey in August 2013 immediately after the IBBY Executive Meeting. The members of the jury had previously studied all the nominations made by the national Sections and after long discussions they selected two projects that were judged to be making a lasting contribution to reading promotion for young people. The two winning projects are The Children’s Book Bank in Toronto, canada and PRAESA in cape Town, South Africa. A full list of the 2014 candi-dates can be found on the IBBY website and in Bookbird issue 2014/1.

“It was a difficult task for the jury to choose two winners from the fourteen nominations as all the projects are of great merit and comple-ment IBBY’s Mission Statement” said Jury President kiyoko Matsuoka. “Each project targets children who live in disadvantageous circumstances

The 2014 Andersen Jury: l-r Elda Nogueira, Fanuel Hanan Diaz, Maria Jesus Gil, Deborah Soria, Sang-

wook Kim, Sabine Fuchs, Ayfer Ünal, Liz Page, Sahar Tarhandeh, Erik Titusson, Anastasia Arkhi-

pova, Susan Stan and Enrique Perez Diaz.

Jury President María Jesús Gil announcing the winners.


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with no or little access to books. They are really Reading Promotion Projects!”

The 2014 jury comprised: Jury chair kiyoko Matsuoka (Japan), Marilar Aleixandre (Spain), Hasmig chahinian (France), nadia El kholy (Egypt), Azucena Galindo (Mexico), Linda Pavonetti (USA) and Timotea Vrablova (Slovakia).

The children’s Book Bank was founded in 2007 with a mission to support children’s literacy by recycling good quality used children’s books and distributing them free of charge to children living in high-needs neighborhoods. The first children’s book bank store was opened in 2008 in the Regent Park area of Toronto, one of Toron-to’s high density/low income neighborhoods and home to many new canadians. There are 102 nationalities within a two-kilometer radius of the store! The Book Bank operates much like a bookshop, although the books are free to the children. There is no membership, registration or fees of any kind. On each visit the children are permitted to select and take a book home to keep. The members of staff also provide the children and their families with advice on literacy and book selection.

The Book Bank offers a unique service, supporting book ownership rather than just access, connecting a supply of gently used chil-dren’s books with the opportunity for having books in their homes. children in families who may lack resources for purchasing books are able

to begin building personal libraries, increasing their literacy and literary backgrounds, helping them to see books as “familiar objects” in their own homes. Parents and teachers have reported that access to book ownership through the Book Bank has improved literacy in the neigh-borhood and enhanced the children’s academic performance. It also offers a number of literacy-support programs including a program to teach parents how to read to babies (Books for Babies), a dictionary giveaway program (Words for Wee Ones) and an after-school book buddies program (Stories for Students).

The Book Bank has a staff of one full-time and two part-time members and a volunteer base of over 50 individuals, including a large number of retired teachers and librarians. The Book Bank also relies on the support of thousands of anony-mous volunteers who run school and community book drives to supply the Book Bank with books. Every day the Book Bank gives away approxi-mately 250 books at its store and approximately another 3,000 books a month to its collabora-tive partners for their own book banks and other schools and agencies needing books for distribu-tion to children. In its first five years of opera-tion the Book Bank distributed over 400,000 free books! You can read more at childrensbookbank-blog.com

PRAESA is an independent unit for research and development affiliated with the University of cape Town. It was established as a result of the struggle against apartheid education and its initial function was to document alternatives that had been tried out and could guide the new education process. PRAESA now concentrates on various aspects of early and informal educa-tion, such as:

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• research and development programs for bilingualism and biliteracy in early childhood education;

• raising the status of the (official) African languages for oral and written language functions in society;

• mentoring adults to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the value of becoming reading and writing role models for children of all ages and supporting their growing understanding and strategies for achieving this;

• initiating the development of mate-rials for use with babies and children in multilingual situations through original writing and translation;

• setting up and supporting reading clubs and story-time sessions to support the deepening of reading culture development.

nal’ibali, which means here’s the story in Xhosa, is a national Reading for Enjoyment campaign. Inspired by the Vulindlela Reading club (VcR) in Langa, cape Town, which was PRAESA’s first reading club, nal’ibali aims to motivate parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults to share their reading experiences with children. nal’ibali is divided in two main parts:

i) A network of Reading clubs, lead by volun-teers and supported by PRAESA and partners through mentoring, training and materials.

ii) A reading promotion advocacy campaign, with information and multilingual reading materials on digital platforms, bilingual reading for enjoyment supplements distrib-uted 35 times a year for the reading clubs through the most significant daily papers in South Africa as well as a series of special events throughout the year.

For more information, see www.praesa.org.za.

IBBY-Yamada FundThe IBBY-Yamada Fund has been supporting

grass-root projects since 2006. during this time 67 projects and workshops have been organized and run by 34 IBBY national Sections around the world. Furthermore, IBBY members have been supported to attend three regional congresses. The projects have included workshops to train authors, illustrators, publishers and librarians. Training sessions have shown people how to make cloth books and how to look after books. Schol-arships have been awarded, including a librarian from Burkina Faso who went to Paris to train at the Bibliothèque national de France on current methods of reading promotion in libraries, and a scholar from Venezuela who could complete an on-line course in children’s literature run from Spain.

All of these workshops and training events have been possible by sponsorship from the IBBY-Yamada Fund. Every year IBBY invites the national Sections to submit projects following pre-determined basic guidelines, which the Project Subcommittee of the IBBY Executive committee carefully studies and puts forward its recommendations to the Ec. The Ec then approves worthwhile projects. It is a long process, but one that has proved to be a good process judging by the many excellent projects that are associated with the Fund.

during the 2014 Bologna Book Fair, IBBY President Ahmad Redza Ahmad khairuddin had the pleasure of announcing that the Yamada Bee company has agreed to continue its support for another five years. This means that IBBY will be able to support at least another 40 workshops and projects! We are truly grateful to Mr. Yamada and the Yamada Bee company for supporting IBBY and its members, allowing them to carry out these projects.

International Conference on Literacy through Literature, 6 - 8 February 2014, New DelhiThe International conference on Literacy through Literature in new delhi was organized by the Association of Writers and Illustrators for children (AWIc)—Indian BBY. It was convened from 6 to 8 February 2014 to provide a platform for scholars, writers, storytellers and researchers


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to share their views with teachers and all those who are involved in the field of education. We are proud of the fact that at our conference many famous authors, storytellers and illustrators were among the participants. Apart from participants from all over India, writers and educators from many countries also shared their views and expe-riences. Along with authors dealing with litera-ture for children and young adults, there were experts in the field of technology to share their

views on the importance of technological literacy in today’s education system. Furthermore, workshops on crafts, creative writing and story-telling provided ample material for teachers and librarians. An exhibi-tion of alphabet books and first books from India and other countries under the title First Steps to Literacy highlighted the development of learning in young children.

Members of Indian BBY/AWIc had been working hard for the past two years to organize this conference and had to face many interrup-tions, such as the Indian Assembly Elections, the economic conditions of all the funding agencies and the long winter vacations in the schools. In spite of these difficulties, the untiring spirit of our members ulti-mately gave shape to this event.

There were over two hundred participants, not only from India, but also from different parts of the world: Australia, Finland, Greece, Indo-nesia, Japan, the Maldives, Singapore, Turkey and the USA. Teachers from the kendriya Vidyalayas (central Schools of India) came in large numbers from different states in India.

The members of the Executive committee of AWIc, chief Guest Feisal Alkazi, a well-known theatre personality, and Guest of Honor Ellis Vance from the USA, who represented IBBY International, inau-gurated the conference with the traditional lighting of the lamp accom-panied by the chanting of Sanskrit hymns.

during the opening Mr. Feisal Alkazi spoke of the importance of having regional local languages and culture represented in children’s literature. Mr. Sikandar, director of the national Book Trust talked about the relevance of books in the promotion of literacy and Mr. Ellis Vance spoke about the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and its various activi-ties. AWIc President Ms nilima Sinha congrat-ulated the Secretary General Ms Manorama Jafa for being a recipient of the Padma Shri national Award, which is a matter of honor for AWIc. Every year AWIc honors those who have distinguished themselves in the field of chil-dren’s literature. This year, the AWIc Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Madhu Pant and Convener Indira Bagchi lighting the inaugural lamp.

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Satyavrata Sharma, the AWIc Author Award to Arup kumar dutta and darshan Singh Aasht, and the AWIc Illustrator Award to Suvidha Mistry.

At the close three beautiful books written by AWIc members were released and presented to the audience: ChahchahaateGeet, a collection of poems in Hindi for the very young published by AWIc; The Stranger and Other Curious Stories, a collection of short stories; and the play Children of the Magic Pen.

The first session began after the inauguration and was on the “Importance of Literacy and the Role of Books.” The speakers stressed that the imagination must be nurtured in order to promote creativity and that literacy can enable a person to use words to activate their creative imagination. Good literature is important for a better quality of life and leads us to experience the possibility of being better human beings. A speaker from the Indira Gandhi Open University advocated the establishing of courses on children’s literature at university level and pointed out the need for having evaluation criteria for children’s books. The importance of books that are suitable for rural environments was also highlighted. The speakers stressed that the development of creativity and imagination are important to education, even though it was felt that today, parents and guardians are very career oriented and that success in examinations and learning from textbooks matters more to them.

In the session “Spreading Literacy in Today’s India: The Alternative channel,” the audience was introduced to the Open school, which now includes vocational skills in its programmes. One panellist spoke about imparting writing skills and creating a learning society through the Alternative channel of Open Schooling. The afternoon activ-ities consisted of workshops on puppet-making, storytelling and creative writing. Storytellers from Singapore and India related stories to children and a delegate from Indonesia held a workshop on how to make simple storytelling devices.

The day ended with a colorful fusion perfor-mance by children from the north Eastern region of India that highlighted the importance of literacy using puppets and classical dance of Hanuman’s Ramayana.

Friday began with an address by the Honorable Minister of State, HRd, dr. Shashi Tharoor. He expanded on various ways through which literacy could be promoted, including through comics, graphic novels and digital media.

Mr. Sikandar releasing the collection of Hindi poems.

Delegate from Indonesia holding a workshop on how to make simple story-telling devices.


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“creating the Right Literature in Steps to Literacy” was the theme of the first session. Speakers emphasized the fact that the right literature—right in content, language, format and medium—should be created always keeping the reader in mind. Various examples were given: pictures are important for very small children even before they can speak; graphic novels are attractive to reluctant readers; and the use of poetry, rhymes and songs help to develop an interest in books.

In the next session, “Reaching Books Where There are none,” the chairperson stressed the importance of libraries in giving access to books to children in underprivileged areas. Innova-tions made for language development and the Mothers’ Libraries run by the nGO Muktangan in Mumbai, which promotes literacy in rural communities, were much appreciated. Speakers from Australia and Singapore talked about the importance of storytelling and drama in promoting literacy. A speaker from Finland described the different forms in which books can be produced to attract the reader’s attention.

In the session on “The Role of nGOs,” the founder of Prayas, an active nGO for street children, acted as chairperson and presented an overview of how literacy can be promoted in the case of drop-outs, the girl-child and the disabled. delegates from the VT-AWIc Youth Library described reading promotion activities practiced

in the remote areas of Arunachal Pradesh in nE India. The participant from Pratham Books dwelt on how the joy of reading should be available to all in a democratic manner, and the speaker from the nGO, Amar Jyoti, talked about the multi-disciplinary approach of special education and the integration of children with disabilities.

In the afternoon, the storyteller from Australia and a play by the team from the Youth Library of Arunachal Pradesh drew great applause for their presentations. A workshop on how to tell a story demonstrated ways of telling stories more effec-tively; another workshop on creative writing for children was also conducted.

children of the 21st century are surrounded by technology in ways that would have confounded their parents a generation ago and a host of inno-vations have transformed the learning landscape. The chair of the Saturday morning session on “Technological Literacy” shared a humorous film on technology and its applications with the audi-ence. Then a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology talked about computer literacy and how he believed that programming was a skill that should be introduced early in school. Another IT expert spoke about digital books, how they are designed and can be used. Another speaker talked about how talking books could be used with adolescents with drug problems.

The last session of the conference was dedi-cated to “A Better Tomorrow.” Ellis Vance was in the chair and he led the session that dealt with moral and social issues, gender issues, protection of the environment, and inculcating a civic sense through books. An Indian author talked about taboo subjects in Young Adult fiction and the need to provide children with an awareness of issues such as gender insensitivity, drugs, violence and other social issues, so that they may learn to deal with them. The President of IBBY Indonesia presented a magazine about health and hygiene that is specifically written for children.

At the end of the day the chief guest at the Valedictory session congratulated members of AWIc for their impressive work and wished them success in their attempts at nation building. He said the Government should help and support such organizations. Finally, a group from

Fusion of storytelling with puppet and Indian classical dance.

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Mumbai performed a cultural program that was a fusion of storytelling with puppets and Indian classical dance. The dance drama for children about Gandhi showcased the importance of performing arts in spreading literacy.

during the three-day conference the partici-pants discussed many important issues, but throughout the meeting the main focus was that every child, poor or rich, has the right to a good education. How books can help those who are less privileged and do not have the opportunity for a good education. The child in the small town or the village often does not have access to the better schools, which are mainly found in cities nor the possibility to attend a private school. The questions raised were how do we ensure that there is a democratization of the joy of reading; how do we ensure that every man, woman and child receives a good education, so that they can become a better person, not only in our country, but in every part of the world?

Some important recommendations emerged from the discussions and also from the comments by the participants:

1. Every citizen has the right to be literate, in every sense of the word, i.e. morally, socially, technologically and politically.

2. Governments must ensure that all citi-zens not only learn to read and write, but are also educated about important issues such as health, hygiene, civic sense, moral values, environment, technologi-cal skills and vocational skills.

3. i) creators of children’s books – authors and illustrators and publishers – should be encouraged to develop books with the values mentioned above.

ii) Authors and illustrators from rural backgrounds could be motivated through workshops to write books that children from rural areas and small towns can relate to.

4. Books and other media in all languages should be made available through librar-ies in every school, village and commu-nity. This will ensure that learning is extended with the help of self-motivated

and joyful reading. 5. The Teacher-Training curriculum should

include courses on children’s literature and how it can be used to develop read-ing skills and literacy.

6. Seminars and conferences should be held in rural areas in every region to motivate teachers, librarians and educationists to promote literacy through the reading of suitable books.

Indira Bagchi & Nilima SinhaAWIC, April 2014

Anārestān: An Exhibition of Contem-porary Iranian Illustration at the Inter-national Youth Library of MunichSince 1983, the International Youth Library has been at home in the historic Blutenburg castle in Munich, Germany. Since its establishment after World War II the library has constantly been developed and is now a large research center and specialized library for children, the largest in the world. The heart of the International Youth Library is a collection of more than half a million books in 130 different languages, published in the last 400 years. In addition to this, the library contains around 30,000 titles on adolescent literature, 250 professional journals and 40,000 documents. Every year, about 1,000 publishers from all around the world donate their newest published works to the library.

In addition to the unique book collection, the halls of Blutenburg castle host various events. Exhibitions are designed for both children and adults and include illustration exhibitions and the display of literary works (past and present) from different countries. Some of these exhi-bitions travel to public libraries, schools and various institutes. One of the latest exhibitions and one that was enjoyed by the members of the Andersen Jury during their time at the library, is the Iranian exhibitions of illustrations Anārestān, which is the first part of a bilateral exhibition called Anārestān—Erdbeerland [Anārestān—Land of Strawberries]. It was staged at the Inter-national Youth Library with the support of the Artistic Association of Illustration and design in


FOcUS IBBY

Berlin, the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Embassy’s cultural Office. The current exhibition contains 70 works by 16 Iranian illustrators from 13 publishers (Iranian and non-Iranian), selected by Thomas Richter Eigenhufe a German illustrator and curator, Andreas TÖpfer a graphic designer, Gabor Steisinger an animator, Anja Tchepets a printmaking specialist, and Ali Boozari an illustrator, art researcher and member of Iranian IBBY.

In May 2013, Eigenhufe traveled to Iran to personally meet the Iranian publishers and illustrators and select works for the exhibition. He was also the guest of children’s Book council/IBBY Iran and gave a speech about former exhibitions and German illustration. But the idea for such an exhibition goes back to several years ago, when Eigenhufe visited a small exhibition of Iranian books in Germany. At that time he was willing to publish some of these books, but there were financial problems so he decided to familiarize the audience with the beauty of these works through holding an exhibition instead. He curated two other small exhibitions of Iranian contemporary illustration in Berlin (2011) and Hamburg (2012). But this time, based on his previous experience, he decided to collaborate with not just one publisher, but the illustrators

themselves. It took him a few years to reach an agreement with the International Youth Library of Munich about staging this exhibition. Anārestān is more significant than the two previous exhibitions for two reasons: first, it exhibits more works by Iranian illustrators and active children’s books publishers, and second, this exhibition takes place not in a gallery, but in a world-famous institu-tion specialized in the field of children’s literature. Addi-tionally, the catalogue that has been prepared contains comprehensive information about Iranian illustration and this specific exhibition.

The illustrators, whose works are on display in this exhibition are listed as follows: negin Ehtesabian, Bride and Groom in the Rain (khorus Publishing, nazar); Atieh Bozorg Sohrabi, No Reason, (Bagh-e-Abi); Ali Buzari, La Lecon De La Fontaine, (Lirabelle); Hoda Hadādi, Sara, Apple Marmalade, and the River (Elmi Farhangi); Rashin kheyieh, The Sea Waves Washed a Bottle Ashore (cheshmeh); Morteza Zahedi, 1000 Zanimaux (R.M.n. Grand Palais); Amir Sha’bani Poor, The Parrot and the Grocer (IIdcYA); Farshid Shafi’ei, Das-Dasi, Babash Miad (khorus, nazar); noushin Safakhu, A Man to be Friends with (khaneh Adabiāt); Mithra Abdollahi, First

King of the World (khaneh Adabiāt); Alireza Golduzian, Nim Man Bough, (nārestan); nargess Mohamadi, I’m not Afraid, (Behnashr); Reza Maktabi, Magic of Painting, (Monadi Tarbiat); Atefeh Malekiju, Ahmad Agha, (Bāgh-e-Abi); Hasan Mousavi, Uncle’s Mustache, (Peydayesh); Fereshteh najafi, King Bahrām, (Grandir).

The exhibition is designed in a way that after passing through the

Cover of the catalogue for Anārestān

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corridor where the works are on display, a pomegranate tree can be spotted. Sixteen small pomegranates, one made by every one of the participating illustrators, are hanging from this tree.

The opening ceremony of Anārestān began with a speech by Library director, dr. christiane Raabe. She talked about the glory and success of Iranian illustration in international events, such as Bologna Book Fair, and that hopefully this exhibition will familiarize German audi-ences with Iranian illustration. Afterwards, Ali Boozari went on to give a speech about the tendencies of contemporary illustration in Iran. After presenting a short history, he spoke about the art of each of the partici-pants. Then the invitees were given small dried pomegranates to hang on the exhibition tree and contribute to the decorating process.

connected to the exhibition an illustration workshop for children was organized by Ali Boozari, at the Library, and by Rashin kheyrieh at the Munich International School. In Boozari’s workshop, a short-ened version of Dokhtarān-e-Anār (Pomegranate’s daughter) by Samad Behrangi was narrated and each of the children drew a picture of her. These drawings were hung on the pomegranate tree of the exhibition during the visit. kheyrieh told the story of The Pink Witch, illustrated by herself, and the children went on to draw pictures after seeing the book’s illustrations. The second part of this exhibition, with the participation of 16 German illustrators, was held in May 2014, in Tehran, with the cooperation of the children’s Book council of Iran/IBBY Iran.

Ali Boozari, Tehran

Being the first of its kind written in Bolivia, Moyano

Aguirre’s album book received the top prize from the

Simón I. Patiño foundation’s national book contest. La

increíble tía Dorita is an evocative book from front to

back, and features a skillful manipulation of color that

contrasts the listlessness of the protagonist at the

onset of the story to the arrival of his aunt later on.

The division of pages helps aid this effect, whereby

the child is depicted as being in a world of darkness,

and the visiting aunt, in a world full of color. However,

Aunt Dorita is blind and actually experiences dark-

ness, and the narrative makes clear that she has a

“blindness that can see the world,” which speaks to

her capacity to live life. The arrival of his blind aunt

transforms the main character into a child who learns

how to experience the world, its colors, and all of its

other simple joys.

Gaby Vallejo Canedo

Rosario Moyano Aguirre

La increíble tía Dorita [The Amazing Aunt dorita]

Bolivia: Plural Editores – Fundación

Simón I. Patiño, 201216 p.ISBn: 9789995422790(Picturebook, ages 3+)

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l i v i a

2012


Would you like to write for IBBY’s journal?Academic Articles ca. 4000 wordsBookbird publishes articles on children’s literature with an international perspective four times a year (in January, April, July and October). Articles that compare literatures of different countries are of interest, as are papers on translation studies and articles that discuss the reception of work from one country in another. Articles concerned with a particular national literature or a particular book or writer may also be suitable, but it is important that the article should be of interest to an international audience. Some issues are devoted to special topics. details and deadlines of these issues are available from Bookbird’s web pages.

Children and Their Books ca. 2500 wordsBookbird also provides a forum where those working with children and their literature can write about their experiences. Teachers, librarians, publishers, authors and parents, short articles discussing the ways in which you have worked with children and their literatures, or have watched children respond to literature are welcomed. Articles concerned with a particular national issue are of interest, but should be written in a manner that appeals to an international audience.

Postcards and Letters ca. 300 or 1000 wordsBookbird publishes reviews of both primary and secondary sources. Brief ‘postcards’ (ca. 300 words) on individual works of children’s literature, or extended ‘letters’ (ca. 1000 words) introducing the work of a particular author or illustrator are welcomed. In addition to the full publication details, please comment on whether the works are available in translation.

For further information, please contact: Björn Sundmark, Email: [email protected]

Danny, Who Fell In A Hole is about a boy who inadvertently discovers the therapeutic potential of art. Danny’s father leaves his job as a salesperson to pursue an opera career in New York City, and his mother pursues a career in cheese-cake in Banff, Alberta. Aside from the difficulty of his family separating, Danny struggles to relate to his parents and brother, Doug. Danny is the only one in the family who is practical rather than artistic. Danny likes mathematics and science, and Doug is a songwriter who berates his younger brother’s artistic endeavors. After hearing about the separa-tion, Danny runs away. On the run, he falls into a hole, where he meets a talking mole. Most of the story takes place in the hole, narrating Danny’s experience with Mole, who has an artistic streak. When Danny emerges from the hole, he resolves to take his parent’s separation in stride. The book is great for helping young readers discover and value their interests as well as deal with family problems.Taylor Kraayenbrink

carl Fagan

Danny, Who Fell In A HoleToronto: Groundwood, 2013116 p.ISBn 9781554983117(novel; Ages

Tor

onTo

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a

2013

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Special Issue Exploring Global Nonsense Literature

Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature invites contributions for a special issue exploring global nonsense literature. While all nonsense texts share a grounding in a playful subver-sion of language and logic, their weft and warp vary widely depending on provenance. From christian Morgenstern (Germany) to Sukumar Ray (India) to kirsi kunnas (Finland), nonsense literature is tied closely to local culture, historical events, artistic tradition, and linguistic interactions. In addition to the exploration of unique manifestations of global nonsense, other topics might include, but are not limited to:

• nonsense arising from political, economic, or cultural upheaval• colonial and post-colonial reactions, especially to British nonsense hegemony• performative and/or oral manifestations• genre debates• definitions• cultural and structural fusions• audience and conceptions of childhood• pedagogy• translation• spiritual connections

Full papers should be submitted to the editor, Björn Sundmark ([email protected]), and guest editor, Michael Heyman ([email protected]) by 1 december 2014. Please see Bookbird’s website at www.ibby.org/bookbird for full submission details. Papers which are not accepted for this issue will be considered for later issues of Bookbird.

A fantastic adventure, this is the story of Ahmet, trying to

rescue his little brother who is imprisoned in a dungeon

hidden in a fantastic world that is reached through a

secret door. This book not only encompasses all the

attributes of a good Western fantasy but also introduces

the reader with Middle Eastern folkloric characters. The

prejudice of these characters being “old fashioned” is

successfully eliminated by the well-balanced integration

of their existence into a modern plot. The complicated

problems are not solved easily through coincidences.

Even in those moments when the characters feel

desperately hopeless, the character is enlightened by

logical steps to reach the possible solution. Furthermore,

no step is easily predicted by the reader; each one is

extraordinarily surprising. If you have the courage to join

extraordinary characters in order to make an extraor-

dinary journey taking place in extraordinary locations,

start heading towards the pages of Secret Door.

Tülin Kozikoglu

Burcu Unsal

Secret Door, Nightmare Forest

İstanbul: Mavibulut Yayıncılık, 2010

336 pages ISBn 978-975-310-125-7(novel; 8+)

isTa

nBUl

T U r K

ey2010


The recognised Slovene writer Dim Zupan wrote his first

book about Hector the black Labrador in 2006, with another

six books featuring the same shaggy hero following. These

books have regularly been nominated for and won two

important Slovene literary prizes, The Večernica Award

and The Desetnica Award. In his latest book, Zupan tackles

the challenging topics of aging and death. With the dog’s

first person narration and his characteristic gentle humour,

these themes are reassuringly depicted and, although

moving in the final pages, Zupan’s presentation is in no way

traumatic. The exemplary quality of Hektor in zrela hruška

[Hector and the Ripe Pear] is expressed by combining the

humorous with the serious to model how to deal with even

the most difficult chapters of life. Because much of Hector’s

experience can be applied to human experience, Zupan’s

book provides an excellent starting point for discussion

about the brevity of life. The manageable length, spaciously

arranged text, and collage illustrations also make this book

ideal for a hesitant reader.

Gaja Kos

dim Zupan (Illus. Andreja Gregorič)

Hektor in zrela hruška [Hector and the Ripe Pear]

Ljubljana: Založba Mladika, 2011

56 p. ISBn: 9789612051693(Picturebook; 6+)

ljUBlja

naslo

v e n i a

2011

This is a solemn tale of a musical gipsy who travels the world as an intermediating trader between nature and mankind. The story gives testament to the strength of friendship, as the gipsy befriends four enchanted dolls, who are themselves companions with the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. Throughout their journey, the gipsy facilitates the cycles of nature and man’s part in it by directly connecting these elements to people like bakers and millers, who rely on nature’s aggregate products to make a livelihood. While the gipsy’s songs are described as having a somber melody, Mohammadi narrates the story in a positive and eloquent tone. His writing style is consistent with the gipsy’s travels, resulting in a timeless effect that likens itself to the lulling rhythms of the earth. Bahra Eshraq

Mohammad Hadi Mohammadi(Illus. Haleh Tavakoli)

[Song of Gipsy’s Tar] رد یلوک رات گنهآTehran: IRHcLI, 201332 p.ISBn: 9786009382750 (Picturebook, ages 3+)

T

eHran

i r a n

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F or information on the Etisalat Award for Arabic children's Literature go to www.etisalataward.ae


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The Journal of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young PeopleCopyright © 2014 by Bookbird, Inc. Reproduction of articles in Bookbird requires permission in writing from the editor.

Editor: Roxanne Harde, University of Alberta—Augustana Faculty (Canada)

Address for submissions and other editorial correspondence: [email protected]

Bookbird’s editorial office is supported by the Augustana Faculty at the University of Alberta, Camrose, Alberta, Canada.

Editorial Review Board: Peter E. Cumming, York University (Canada); Debra Dudek, University of Wollongong (Australia); Libby Gruner, University of Richmond (USA); Helene Høyrup, Royal School of Library & Information Science (Denmark); Judith Inggs, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa); Ingrid Johnston, University of Albert, Faculty of Education (Canada); Shelley King, Queen’s University (Canada); Helen Luu, Royal Military College (Canada); Michelle Martin, University of South Carolina (USA); Beatriz Alcubierre Moya, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (Mexico); Lissa Paul, Brock University (Canada); Laura Robinson, Royal Military College (Canada); Bjorn Sundmark, Malmö University (Sweden); Margaret Zeegers, University of Ballarat (Australia);

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Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature (ISSN 0006-7377) is a refereed journal published quarterly in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall by IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, and distributed by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4363 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices.

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IBBY Executive Committee 2012-2014: Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin (Malaysia), President; Linda Pavonetti Vice President (USA); Hasmig Chahinian (France), Vice President; Marilar Aleixandre (Spain); Gülçin Alpöge (Turkey); Nadia El Kholy (Egypt); Kiyoko Matsuoka (Japan), Azucena Galindo (Mexico); Angela Lebedeva (Russia); Akoss Ofori-mensah (Ghana); Timotea Vrablova (Slovakia), Voting Members; María Jesús Gil (Spain), Andersen Jury President; Elizabeth Page (Switzerland), Executive Director; Ellis Vance (USA), Treasurer; Roxanne Harde (Canada), Bookbird Editor.

IBBY may be contacted at Nonnenweg 12 Postfach, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland, tel: +4161 272 29 17 fax: +4161 272 27 57 email: [email protected] <www.ibby.org>.

Bookbird is indexed in Library Literature, Library and Information Abstracts (LISA), Children’s Book Review Index, and the MLA International Bibliography.

Cover image by Rafael Lopez, from Book Fiesta! by Pat Mora. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. The cover illustration by Rafael Lopez is used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Feature Articles: Pat Mora: Transcending the Continental Divide One Book at a Time • Learning in Francisco Hinojosa’s Children’s Fiction • María Elena Walsh and the Art of Subversive Children’s Literature • The New Children of Resistance: Becoming a Child through the Stories Told by the EZLN • Magical Realist Moments in Malín Alegría’s Border Town Series • Chilean Children’s Literature and National Identity: Post-Dictatorship Discourses of Chileanness through the Representation of Indigenous People • El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in The Meaning of Consuelo

52.3 (2014)

Pat Mora - International Board on Books for Young People

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Transcript of Pat Mora - International Board on Books for Young People