LibGuides: Hispanic American & Latin American Literature: Media

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American Passages, A Literary Survey: Exploring Borderlands (27:38) Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa tells us that the border is "una herida abierta [an open wound] where… the lifeblood of two worlds is merging to form a third country — a border culture." This program explores the literature of the Chicano borderlands and its beginnings in the literature of Spanish colonization.
American Passages, A Literary Survey: Migrant Struggle (27:38) Americans have often defined themselves through their relationship to the land. This program traces the social fiction of three key American voices: John Steinbeck, Carlos Bulosan, and Helena María Viramontes.
Isabel Allende: The Woman's Voice in Latin American Literature (54:32) Isabel Allende, the first Latin American woman to bestride the world literary stage, describes the emotions that inform her fiction and the events that set them in motion. Niece of the deposed (and presumably assassinated) Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende, she fled Chile in terror and blossomed in exile to write of the love, hate, and revenge that shape the lives of people she knew, or dreamt about: her characters, her own legend in the making.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (26:14) Gabriel García Márquez's multigenerational saga of the Buendía family in the isolated town of Macondo inaugurated the boom in Latin American literature in the 1970s and marked the beginning of magical realism. Writer Sandra Cisneros and scholar of Latin American literature, Ilan Stavans lend their thoughts and voices to the discussion of this epic novel.
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist of Words (47:57) With sales of more than 32 million books in 51 languages, Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is one of the most widely read authors in the world. This program captures Coelho’s story through conversations with the award-winning writer and those who know and admire him. Coelho’s use of a symbolic language, designed to transcend the intellect to speak directly to the heart, is discussed along with colorful incidents spanning his life, from his youthful involvement with the hippie movement to his emergence as a world-class author.
Sandra Cisneros (04:12) Listen to excerpts from "House on Mango Street." Cisneros notes that she was discovering feminism for her students and herself as she wrote.
Sandra Cisneros: An Interview (07:18) In this 2002 interview, award-winning poet and writer Sandra Cisneros talks about her novel "Caramelo,” the story of a Mexican family with members and memories on both sides of the U.S. border.
Series: Fire & Ink - The Legacy of Latin American Literature Myth, magical realism, hard-edged realism, fantasy—the literature of Latin America encompasses all these forms and more. This 13-part series guides viewers chronologically and thematically through the region’s varied genres and narrative styles, linking them to centuries of warfare, colonization, and national struggles for independence and identity. Excerpts from influential works are plentiful, while detailed commentary is provided by an impressive array of scholars—including Eduardo Galeano, celebrated Uruguayan journalist; Sergio Pitol, Mexican writer and Cervantes Prize recipient; Doris Summer, professor of Romance languages andlLiterature at Harvard University; and José Rabasa, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley.13-part series, 45–54 minutes each.