Latin America: From the Outside, In
April 04, 2012
Author and Yale professor Josefina Ludmer leads discussions about her most recent book
Author and Yale professor Josefina Ludmer leads discussions about her most recent book, Aquí América Latina.
On March 6, 2012, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, in coordination with the Latin American Studies Center, welcomed renowned author, essayist, and critic Dr. Josefina Ludmer to discuss her research and newest book, Aquí América Latina, published in 2010.
Ludmer led a roundtable discussion in St. Mary’s Hall regarding how Aquí América Latina relates to Latin America as well as Spain. Ludmer conducted the majority of her research in Argentina and attested to the hardships of writing literature in Latin America. She described the book as a mixture between a personal diary and a critique of others’ texts. Specifically, the book delves into the political turmoil of the Cold War era and its effect on Latin American literature and the Spanish language itself.
“This book details an epoch of my life and my studies in Argentina,” explains Ludmer. “It is important that we not criticize literature but rather analyze it. Imagination is something that we share with all human beings and something so native to mankind it deserves discourse.”
Ludmer’s novel fuses many definable concepts—the mixture of urban and rural, of realism and the fantastic, of communism and capitalism. A major dialogue of the book discusses the advance of the Spanish language in a global setting, mainly as a method of communication. Ludmer even believes the language is an economic resource.
“[Ludmer] has a unique perspective and has broken borders with her studies,” comments Oscar Santos-Sopena, a UMD graduate student in Catalan Studies who attended the roundtable discussion. “It is very difficult to detach oneself from the political and social atmosphere of a country to analyze from an outside view.”