It is difficult to look back on our thirteen weeks together and discern a common line between the readings, if any, despite their residence under the umbrella term of “literature from Latin America.” In an increasingly global world offering the potential for travel between a manifold of countries and adoption of new identities, authors are no longer constrained by ethnicity or nationality, religion or antitheism, class or gender, and in the breaking down of these established characteristics, perhaps are emblematic of the increased “muddying” of the literary categories as a whole. 

    Despite this uncertainty, I found the works for this course to be engaging, thought-provoking and offering a variety which would customarily not be studied by a major in English Literature. As much as I can appreciate such canon works of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems—both of which stand as my favourite course readings this semester!—there is something to be said for minutely obscure works, at least outside the boundaries of their own countries, found in Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World or Azuela’s The Underdogs. I think I enjoyed these two readings for the ways they enlightened me on events I might have previously heard about in history, but knew only scant details involving them. I would have never read these texts had I not taken this course; it is owing to my knowledge from this course that I can contend the Haitian slave revolts and the Mexican revolution, despite the differences between them, are united in the shared dramatic upheaval of established rules—and this sudden cultural change originating from a moment in time is a concept which intrigues me about any historical revolution. 

    As we have learned in this course, revolutions were not restricted to violent change, but instead also remained ever-present in the Latin literary world. The term “magical realism” which would come to describe Marquez’s works would amount to little more a marketable gimmick—a key descriptor which, in its dogged attempts to box the author into one specific category, often fell short in its inherent misunderstanding that Latin America, or any continent, can be defined in platitudes. It is true that all the course readings we have studied share a few common themes: namely, the desire of the authors to speak from experiences informed by political, cultural and personal phenomena; crises arising from South American authoritarianism and class difference; colonialism and its effects on modernity; and many more which I’m sure to forget in the broad nature which accompanies a summary. Regardless, these are only shared characteristics and do not represent the whole of the Latin American experience—I contend that what this is in the personal life, as well as in the literary autobiography of such authors, remains entirely to interpretation. 

    In conclusion, this blog post will mark not only the end of the course, but also my chapter at UBC before my two-semester exchange to Australia beginning in July. I look forward to the tropical sun and friends I’m sure to meet along the way, and in this fashion, the charting of an experience not unlike visiting many Latin American countries. My thanks to Professor Jon Beasley-Murray for another great year of classes in the Romantic/Latin world. Further compliments are in order to Daniel and the class for great discussions. 

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN!

S