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Author Archives: Jon
Bad Girls: Creatures in Travesti Heaven
The girls whose lives are portrayed in Camila Sosa Villada’s Bad Girls (2019) may be seen as “bad” by outsiders looking on, but this book is written from their perspective and although it admits that at times “We had no idea how … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged animals, family, latin america, literature, rmst495, sexuality, teaching, travestis
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Ru: Glimmering through Fragments
Kim Thúy’s Ru (2009) is a lyrical evocation of growing up amid displacement, exile, and migration. It proceeds via a series of very short sections or vignettes, many of which are no more than a dozen lines long, and few of which … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged affect, canada, displacement, literature, love, rmst495, teaching, translation
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The Possession: the Madness of Meaning
Annie Ernaux’s The Possession (2002) is the briefest of tales, at a mere sixty-two pages barely a novella, if a little more than a short story. It explores, and ultimately exorcises (temporarily at least) what Ernaux describes as possession “in both sense … Continue reading Continue reading
That Hair: Ornament and Caricature
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s That Hair (2015) is hardly a conventional novel. It has no obvious plot, for instance, and consists instead of memories (presumably, mostly autobiographical; the narrator’s history seems on the whole to mirror Pereira de Almeida’s biography) and reflections … Continue reading Continue reading
When I Sing, Mountains Dance: Songs of Selves and Others
The subject of the assertion contained in the title of Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance (2019) is, in the first instance, a young man by the name of Hilari who composes poems–though he does not write them down. He comes … Continue reading Continue reading
Discontent: Calling Out Bullshit
Marisa, the narrator and protagonist of Beatriz Serrano’s Discontent (2025) has what anthropologist David Graeber calls a “bullshit job,” which he defines as “a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged gender, literature, posthegemony, rmst495, spain, teaching, work
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Little Eyes: Remote Control and Controlled
At the very end of Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes (2018), there is a mention of a young boy “staring at his own reflection on [a] black screen” (239). The book’s resonance with the TV series, Black Mirror, could hardly be clearer. As with … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged affect, literature, rmst495, science fiction, teaching, technology
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Roads Not Taken
I ended up teaching a course on long books this semester. Here is the original proposal: Why are long books long? Beyond its length, what makes a long book different from a short book? How is the experience of reading … Continue reading Continue reading
2666 VI: Between Parentheses, Naturaleza Muerta
At one point in “The Part of Archimboldi,” the 325-page section with which 2666 concludes, we find ourselves something like four, five, or even six or more levels of narrative deep, as digressions and parentheses accumulate with no clear end. We … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged appearance, bolaño, literature, narrative, painting, teaching
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The Savage Detectives VI: Reading with AI
As an experiment (and in preparation for an upcoming discussion of reading with AI, in the context of reading The Savage Detectives), I thought I would ask ChatGPT a few questions about the book, and see what it came up … Continue reading Continue reading
Tagged ai, bolaño, bullshit, chatgpt, literature, teaching, technology
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