History, Mythology, and 20th Century Latin American Fiction

The history of the Americas from the colonial period is marked by a large influx of persons from Europe and Africa. Fiction in 20th Century Latin America is marked by ties to the Chronicles and the history of human melding in the Americas, with a natural flow of social and religious syncretism that shapes the unique literary aesthetics of its literatures as may be witnessed in representative authors of genuine merit from different regions of Latin America.

Book Review: James M. Binnall, Twenty Million Angry Men: The Case for Including Convicted Felons in Our Jury System

In his book, Twenty Million Angry Men: The Case for Including Convicted Felons in Our Jury System, James Binnall discusses whether or not there is sound empirical evidence that proves that ex-convicts should be barred from participating in jury duty. Currently, most states in the United States permanently forbid those with a felony conviction from serving as a juror while some states allow convicted felons to serve only after their entire sentence (including parole and probation) is completed; Maine is the only state that has no restrictions whatsoever.

Walking the city and the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Argentine Literature in the 1920s and 1930s

This article presents an overview of Buenos Aires, city and neighbourhoods, from the viewpoints of several authors who participated in the literary life of the 1920s and 1930s, portraying the evolution of modernity and the social question –inequalities. Novels, short stories, poems and magazines from the period in question were used to frame these issues and unravel the objectives set. It concludes by exposing the variety and diversity of the city and the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, as well as the people who inhabited them and the Buenos Aires literary currents of the period, headed by Jorge Luis Borges, on the one hand (Florida group), and Roberto Arlt (Boedo group), on the other.

Montevideo Crisscrossed. Two Novels by Mario Benedetti: The Truce and Thanks for the Fire

This essay is a rereading of two novels by Mario Benedetti published first in Montevideo in the 1960’s and subsequently in Mexico around the 1970’s, receiving changing receptions over the years. Both have Montevideo as their setting, but the topographical perspectives and writing strategies are different. It traces the networks of writers, publishers and readers in Latin America developed during the 20th century and their obliteration by the military regimes in the 1970’s. Reviewing the fluctuating moods in Benedetti’s later reception, this essay compares opposite sets of aesthetic values developed during the second half of the last century, which are taken for granted even today, studying their initial hypotheses and showing how literary works are distorted by prejudiced sets of critical perspectives that pigeonhole works and authors in boxes established in advance.

The Horror of the Archives: The Novel 300

The explosion of a military warehouse (2005) in the Guatemalan capital exposed the archive of the National Civil Police. Key information suddenly appeared to illustrate the dark years of repression and the incredible suffering of numerous innocent victims during the civil war. The novel 300, by Rafael Cuevas, was inspired by this particular fact. This essay interprets Cuevas’s book as a specific form of modern historical novel characterized by multiple narrative voices. These chronicles and monologues help the reader imagine a very complex universe of repression, horror and human suffering and also to understand the false justifications used by some of the protagonists.

The Unpredictable Lightness of History in Nicolas Cavaillès’ Novellas on the Mauritius Islands

Nicolas Cavaillès ponders on a philosophy of history mixed with humour and irony in his historical narratives of remote islands in the Indian Ocean in two of his novellas: Life of Mr. Legaut (the story of a Huguenot who is forced to leave his native France and travels to these islands) and The Dead on the Donkey, where the wanderings of un unfortunate donkey across the Mauritius Island allow the narrator to relate the history of the island and its tragic trajectory to modernity. The idea of Western history as progressive evolution is rolled upside down with irony in Cavaillès's philosophical reflection on the circumstances leading to colonial expeditions in Life of Mr. Leguat (2013) and in the successive destruction of the Mauritius Island in the novella The Dead on the Donkey (2018). If Cavaillès builds his books hermeneutically, he also defies hermeneutics by denying all forms of possible understanding of the events described. The actions of his protagonists, human or animal, are the result of circumstances that are well known, but so absurd that they cannot form a historical narrative. If they did, this narrative would look like a hybrid of Beckett's absurd and Cioran's despair. Anti-Hegelian, since history here does not lead to individual freedom, Cavaillès's conception of history equally challenges Nietzsche's representation of unhistorical temporality in an attempt to solve humanity’s relation to the past for enacting a more desirable future. In far away Edenic islands, colonized by powerful states and inhabited by human and animal slaves, no philosophy could make sense of history.

Book Review: Reid, S. and Valasik, M., Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White.

In the book, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White, authors Shannon E. Reid and Matthew Valasik begin by advocating for alternative rights gangs to be included in research about street gang activity. Reid and Valasik explain the extent of youth activity in the White Power Movement (WPM). For years, white youth participating in white power movement activities have been excluded from research (Reid and Valasik, 2020). This book aims to provide researchers, scholars, and criminal justice practitioners a great insight into the structure of these alt-right gangs to push for their inclusion in future research (Reid and Valasik, 2020). According to our authors, these youth have been excluded from research because no precise definition defines this group (Reid and Valasik, 2020). These youth have been misclassified when being compared to traditional street gangs. Several definitions have been provided that do not adequately describe these youth.

The Modern Novella or nouvelle beyond the Short Story and the Novel

The modern novella or nouvelle is an object of artistic order of concentration and suggestion. In it, there is a tension between the objective and the subjective, circumstances that bring it closer to other literary forms different from the short story and the novel. Based on this idea, this article presents and discusses the closeness of the modern novella with drama and poem, literary and artistic expressions that also achieve their aesthetic effects through a short or medium length.