The Latin American Story Finder

Anything is possible in the world of Latin American folklore, where Aunt Misery can trap Death in a pear tree; Amazonian dolphins lure young girls to their underwater city; and the Feathered Snake brings the first musicians to Earth. One in a series of folklore reference guides ("...an invaluable resource..."--School Library Journal), this book features summaries and sources of 470 tales told in Mexico, Central America and South America, a region underrepresented in collections of world folklore. The volume sends users to the best stories retold in English from the Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations, Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and colonists, African slave cultures, indentured servants from India, and more than 75 indigenous tribes from 21 countries. The tales are grouped into themed sections with a detailed subject index.

Anything is possible in the world of Latin American folklore, where Aunt Misery can trap Death in a pear tree; Amazonian dolphins lure young girls to their underwater city; and the Feathered Snake brings the first musicians to Earth. One in a series of folklore reference guides ("...an invaluable resource..."--School Library Journal), this book features summaries and sources of 470 tales told in Mexico, Central America and South America, a region underrepresented in collections of world folklore. The volume sends users to the best stories retold in English from the Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations, Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and colonists, African slave cultures, indentured servants from India, and more than 75 indigenous tribes from 21 countries. The tales are grouped into themed sections with a detailed subject index.

The Caribbean islands have a vibrant oral folklore. In Jamaica, the clever spider Anansi, who outsmarts stronger animals, is a symbol of triumph by the weak over the powerful. The fables of the foolish Juan Bobo, who tries to bring milk home in a burlap bag, illustrate facets of traditional Puerto Rican life. Conflict over status, identity and power is a recurring theme—in a story from Trinidad, a young bull, raised by his mother in secret, challenges his tyrannical father who has killed all the other males in the herd. One in a series of folklore reference guides by the author, this volume shares summaries of 438 tales—some in danger of disappearing—retold in English and Creole from West African, European, and slave indigenous cultures in 24 countries and territories. Tales are grouped in themed sections with a detailed subject index and extensive links to online sources.

Combining history with discussions of dramatic cinema, Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies examines how film has portrayed Latin America from the late fifteenth century to the present. The book opens with an introduction on the visual presentation of the past in the movies, while the rest of the book consists of essays that explore the best feature films on Latin America from the professional historian's perspective.

Winner, American Library Association Booklist’s Top of the List, 2019 Adult Nonfiction Acclaimed writer Marie Arana delivers a cultural history of Latin America and the three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone). “Meticulously researched, [this] book’s greatest strengths are the power of its epic narrative, the beauty of its prose, and its rich portrayals of character…Marvelous” (The Washington Post). Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner’s survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places. Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans. He was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the US in 1980. His story echoes the violence that has coursed through the Americas since before Columbus to the crushing savagery of the Spanish Conquest, and from 19th- and 20th-century wars and revolutions to the military crackdowns that convulse Latin America to this day. Xavier Albó is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people. He considers himself an Indian in head and heart and, for this, is well known in his adopted country. Although his aim is to learn rather than proselytize, he is an inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting the natives to Christianity, often forcibly, in the effort to win the New World. Ever since, the Catholic Church has played a central role in the political life of Latin America—sometimes for good, sometimes not. In this “timely and excellent volume” (NPR) Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. Silver, Sword, and Stone combines “learned historical analysis with in-depth reporting and political commentary...[and] an informed and authoritative voice, one that deserves a wide audience” (The New York Times Book Review).

In The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories, Julio Ortega and Carlos Fuentes present the most compelling short fiction from Mexico to Chile. Surreal, poetic, naturalistic, urbane, peasant-born: All styles intersect and play, often within a single piece. There is "The Handsomest Drown Man in the World," the García Márquez fable of a village overcome by the power of human beauty; "The Aleph," Borges' classic tale of a man who discovers, in a colleague's cellar, the Universe. Here is the haunting shades of Juan Rulfo, the astonishing anxiety puzzles of Julio Cortázar, the disquieted domesticity of Clarice Lispector. Provocative, powerful, immensely engaging, The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories showcases the ingenuity, diversity, and continuing excellence of a vast and vivid literary tradition.

This "composite view of the present-day situation in Latin America" seeks to convey an understanding and appreciation of the problems and temper, history and culture, aspirations and attitudes of today's Latin Americans.

What defines the boundary between fact and fabrication, fiction and nonfiction, literature and journalism? Latin American Documentary Narratives unpacks the precarious testimonial relationship between author and subject, where the literary journalist, rather than the subject being interviewed, can become the hero of a narrative in its recording and retelling. Latin American Documentary Narratives covers a variety of nonfiction genres from the 1950s to the 2000s that address topics such as social protests, dictatorships, natural disasters, crime and migration in Latin America. This book analyzes – and includes an appendix of interviews with – authors who have not previously been critically read together, from the early and emblematic works of Gabriel García Márquez and Elena Poniatowska to more recent authors, like Leila Guerriero and Juan Villoro, who are currently reshaping media and audiences in Latin America. In a world overwhelmed by data production and marked by violent acts against those considered 'others', Liliana Chávez Díaz argues that storytelling plays an essential role in communication among individuals, classes and cultures.