Boom LatinAmericano

In the 60s and 70s, Latin America experienced a surge of immense creativity brought forth by young authors, a literary wave known as the Latin American Boom...

My favorite among these writers is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Here he is being very serious:

And here he is being not so serious...

I've been using his stories for years in my classroom. In particular, "A Very Old man with Enormous Wings" is an excellent way to teach students about Magic Realism. (And it's also an excellent companion to Kafka's "A Hunger Artist."

 (Click here to read the story!)

These authors are famous for combining the fantastical with the mundane. 

Julio Cortázar's novel Hopscotch instructs the reader to digest the chapters out of order. 

He also has a story about a traffic jam that lasts so long that a unique culture is born from it.

(Read "The Southern Thruway.")

Another of my personal favorites is Octavio Paz... Here he is looking old and distinguished...

 

But here's another photo of him looking young and putting on the smolder...  

 

Oh wait, that's from Tangled... Here's young Octavio.... 

Octavio is actually in the height of his writing a bit before the so-called "Boom." One of his most famous short stories, "My Life with the Wave," is published in 1949. But as you will discover if you read it, his work is very much in sync with the Magic Realism movement. 

 

(Read "My Life with the Wave") 

And since we are speaking of those who have influenced the Boom Latinamericano, we would be remiss to leave out the amazing surrealist Jorge Luis Borges (author of the mind-blowing "Library of Babel") and the beloved poet/politician, Pablo Neruda. 

 (One of my students has been blogging about this guy. Check out what Mackenzie has to say.)