Special issues

Special issue information

Review 92/93 (June-December 2016), guest-edited by Elizabeth Lowe, focuses on the Brazilian Backlands in Literature and Arts. It includes scholarly articles on literature, film, music, and art of the Brazilian Northeast; fiction by seminal figures, as well as cordel poetry, and work by modern and contemporary authors. The issue includes features by a plethora of writers from throughout the region, reviews of major literary festivals and book fairs, and book reviews of new titles in English translation.

Review 94 (June 2017), guest-edited by author Ernesto Quiñónez, focuses on Latin American and Latino writers affiliated with The City College of New York, CUNY, as alumni and/or faculty. The issue features essays and fiction from a wide selection of writers, as well as a conversation between Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and author Alonso Cueto, and an interview by Jerry W. Carlson with Cuban author Leonardo Padura. This special issue celebrates the rebranding of Review Magazine via Routledge and The City College of New York.

Review 95 (December 2017), guest-edited by scholar and author Deborah Cohn (Indiana University Bloomington), focuses on the reception and legacy of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, Cien años de soledad ( One Hundred Years of Solitude). The issue includes scholarly and creative essays by friends, colleagues, and younger writers whose lives and work have been touched by García Márquez’s novel, as well as texts addressing other dimensions of the author’s development, including his forays into film and his long career as a journalist.

Review 96 (June 2018), guest-edited by scholar/author Aníbal González (Yale University), focuses on Nuevísimo writing from throughout Spanish America, characterized by a breadth of aesthetic approaches and employment of elements including self-fictionalization, critique of nationalism, and interest in other disciplines and genres such as crime and science fiction.

Review 97 (December 2018), guest-edited by scholar Andrew Reynolds (West Texas A & M University), focuses on Rubén Darío and Modernismo Today. Reynolds’s introduction, “The Enduring Scholarly and Creative Legacies of Rubén Darío and Modernismo,” is followed by critical essays; newly translated poems and essays by Darío himself; appraisals of Darío by other masters (Borges, García Lorca, and Neruda); and contemporary texts, as well as original poetry by poets from the region.

Review 98 (June 2019), guest-edited by award-winning novelist Carlos Franz, a fellow of CCNY’s Cátedra Vargas Llosa, focuses on contemporary Chilean writing. Franz’s opening essay, “Imaginary Territories,” introduces and contextualizes the selections compiled in the issue. Among the issue’s features are an excerpt from Joanne Pottlitzer’s “Symbols of Resistance,” a memorial piece on Cuban poet Carilda Oliver Labra, and poetry by Homero Aridjis; reviews cover new titles in translation by Chilean authors Marjorie Agosín, Pablo de Rokha, Ariel Dorfman, Rodrigo Lira, and Cecilia Vicuña, among others representing Latin American and Caribbean writing and arts.

Review 99 (December 2019), guest-edited by Waïl Hassan (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), explores “Arab Latin America.” The issue compiles a breadth of texts and other materials, beginning with Hassan’s cogent introduction, followed by critical essays by leading scholars on emblematic topics, as well as fiction, poetry, creative essays, crônicas, and interviews featuring writers/artists of Arab background hailing from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru—descendants of immigrants from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.

Review 100 (June 2020), guest-edited by Suzanne Jill Levine, with additional consultation by Alfred Mac Adam, compiles essays first published in the journal, from the magazine’s early years to the end of the millennium. The selections bring together contributions by and about many of the region’s most prominent authors as well as by esteemed literary critics. Together these pieces suggest the rich history of Latin American literature in the United States in the twentieth century, provide a panoramic view of that literature and underscore Review’s role in helping to shape it.

Review 101 (December 2020), guest-edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Alfred Mac Adam, is the second of two retrospective issues featuring essays published in the magazine from its early years to the present. This issue covers the period from 2001 to 2019. The essays compiled here explore a breadth of topics, among them the Latin American city; texts on figures such as Pablo Neruda, Clarice Lispector, and Mario Vargas Llosa; memorial pieces on Gregory Rabassa, Alastair Reid, and Rosario Ferré; reflections by various authors; and overviews of key movements and schools.

Review 102 (June 2021), “Digital Brazil: Voices of Resistance,” guest-edited by Elizabeth Lowe (New York University), compiles texts originally produced / circulated via social media, blogs, and other digital platforms, as well as through print media. The contents explore themes relevant to the political, economic, environmental, and social challenges in Brazil today. The cover and inside photographs, by Vincent Catala, visually document individuals, buildings and streets in São Paulo during the Coronavirus pandemic’s terrifying height. The essays and literature in the issue, as discussed in Prof. Lowe’s introduction, include critical essays, respectively, by Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey on “Black Brazilian Feminisms,” by Paulo Dutra on “Resistance and Dissidence,” and by Leila Lehnen on “Decolonizing Fictions” in Afrofuturism; as well as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and blogs by a breadth of “voices of resistance.” Among the writers showcased are Fabricio Corsaletti, J.P. Cuenca, the above-mentioned Dutra, Conceição Evaristo, Noemi Jaffe, Fábio Kabral, Djamila Ribeiro, and Cristiane Sobral. In respective memorial pieces, Nélida Piñon and Paula Parisot reflect on the late author Rubem Fonseca. Special Features include poetry and art by Salgado Maranhão and the late Will Barnet; an interview, by Jerry Carlson, of author Senel Paz; and poems by Mariela Dreyfus. The issue concludes with reviews of Raquel Chang-Rodríguez and Carlos Riobó’s Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa, The Collected Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti, and of other titles by writers from across the hemisphere