The forensic and the fantastic: Latinx writers in the UK
As Latinx writers in the UK, the forces that pulled and pushed our ancestors shatter any linear perspective. Another land of our childhood emerges. No longer the place of magical realism, we see and hear in retrospect what our parents were doing: creating a space for us to see the forest. The world. The planet.
Edited by: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
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Introduction: Forensic procedure/fantastic critique
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
‘Cleansing, or limpieza, had come to mean the killing of defenceless people – a purge of the unclean. But the word was also used for healing a person or place from spirit attack. We can draw in and out the inner life of words like these. They enable a fantastic critique.’
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera introduces a series of works by writers from the current golden age of literature in Latin America.
Magnetic islands
Ana María Reyes Barrios
‘What you can sense outside is the smell of a new bird’
Islas Magnéticas, translated as Magnetic islands, a poem by Ana María Reyes Barrios, author of Sombras de la Sal.
London
Xaviera Ringeling
‘from this island of decreasing safeguards
thousands of kilometres away’
Three poems by Paraguyan/Chilean poet Xaviera Ringeling.thousands of kilometres away’
My dreams
Gaby Sambuccetti
‘Our waste is made of rivers;
desert is not the Sahara anymore,
it is inside our veins’
Two poems by the Argentinian writer Gaby Sambuccetti, the founder of La Ninfa Eco and author of The Good, the Bad & the Poet.desert is not the Sahara anymore,
it is inside our veins’
Future imperfect (an anti-novel manifesto)
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
‘John Squirrel is dead,
Judge Lord said,
Looking down on the Ashinaabe wordsmith Charles Aubin from his judge’s chair,
And you cannot say what a dead man said… hearsay.’
'Future imperfect', a poem in five sections by the writerly poet Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, who also teaches human rights and philosophy in London.Judge Lord said,
Looking down on the Ashinaabe wordsmith Charles Aubin from his judge’s chair,
And you cannot say what a dead man said… hearsay.’
On adoptive language
Isabel del Rio
‘This new language turns out to be
As powerful
As our fate’
A poem, el idioma adoptivo/On adoptive language, by British-Spanish poet Isabel del Rio.As powerful
As our fate’
Tres seasons
Juana Adcock
‘¡Look at how I stand
out from the crowd!’
Two poems by Mexican/Glaswegian poet Juana Adcock, author of the poetry collection Manca.out from the crowd!’
Common fantasy
Carolina Alonso Bejarano
‘Fantasy becomes a medium through which anti-colonial worlds can be reimagined and realized, yet the fantastic also operates to maintain the status quo.’
Columbian writer, cartoonist and activist Carolina Alonso Bejarano on Gumdrops, the serial webcomic she publishes with co-creator Peter Quach.
Gerald Martin in conversation with Oscar Guardiola-Rivera – Forensic fantastic
Gerald Martin and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
‘Latin Americans meeting outside of their territory – in many parts of Europe as a whole, but especially in Paris – had the first modern experience of discovering what a Latin American was.’
Poet and university lecturer Oscar Guardiola-Rivera in coversation with Professor of Caribbean studies and scholar of Latin-American fiction Gerald Martin.
Somebody has to do it
Juan Toledo
‘One misconception is that all Latin American literature is synonymous with magic realism, which is, in reality, a social and historical critique. Some of our most admired and innovative writers never wrote a novel, preferring instead the innovation, irony and refined humour of the short story.’
Juan Toledo celebrates the shift in the UK from an association of Latin American literature with 'lo real maravilloso' to an appreciation of hard-hitting imaginative texts.