Hispanic Caribbean Essayistic Writing: Somewhere beyond the Sea

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Notes

1 In their Cambridge Companion to the Essay, Witman and Kindley provide a “Chronology: 440 Years of Essays” (xiii-xxxiv) which is extremely selective and insufficient, and ultimately uninformed in terms of Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century and the present one. For the nineteenth and twentieth century’s essayistic traditions, trends, and developments, see the two volumes of Los novelistas como críticos (Mexico City: FCE, 1991), edited by Norma Klahn and me. Translations are mine except where noted.

2 Both Sánchez and Sarduy contributed to Review 100, with “Voyage to Caribbean Identity” (first in Review 47, 1993) and “Writing/Transvestism” (originally in Review 9, 1973), and to Los novelistas como críticos II: Sánchez with “Reencuentro con un texto propio” (335-340; Finding One’s Own Text Again), on his first novel; and Sarduy with “Notas a las notas a las notas … A propósito de Manuel Puig” (412-423; Notes to the Notes to the Notes … About Manuel Puig), an interdisciplinary tour de force on the allusions and theoretical underpinnings of Puig’s Boquitas pintadas (Heartbreak Tango).

3 For succinct overviews of Indiana, Padura, Ponte, Portela, and others from the Hispanophone Caribbean, including the Venezuelans Juan Carlos Chirinos and Juan Carlos Méndez Guedez, see Corral et al., The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel, and the General Introduction (1-17). Naturally, other writers would be included now, but the unavailability of their nonfiction is persistent, for the reasons discussed.