Al Norte De Dios: The Other Son of God
2013; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-9648
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American Literature Studies
ResumoEstupinan Bass, Nelson. Al norte de dios: The Other Son of God. Trans. Henry J. Richards. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2013. 141 pp.Ecuador, the most geographically and ethnically diverse nation in Latin America, has a literary tradition that has reflected for centuries its unique geopolitical and racial makeup. Most Ecuadorian belles-lettres of the twentieth century refracted the economic and social tensions that shaped the country's destiny. The literary production of the early twentieth century was largely social and was influenced by a series of economic disasters, revolutions, strikes, and repeated attempts to oppress its indigenous and African-descended population. In the larger context of the Latin American literary canon, the nation is known primarily for novelists and short story writers such as Demetrio Aguilera Malta (1909-81), Jose de la Cuadra (1903-41), and Jorge Icaza (1906-78), the author of Huasipungo (1931), considered the finest example of Ecuadorian relating to the oppression of Afro-Ecuadorians, economic exploitation, and class struggle: themes that both reflect his Marxist ideology (he spent long periods in both the Soviet Union and China) and his position as a black man within the context of Ecuadorian society.Although Ecuadorian writers did not form part of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, with its attendant flow of awards, recognitions, and translations by international publishing houses, the same period saw a discovery of the nation's own unique African-based cultural heritage. Ecuador has had an African-descended population since the sixteenth century (by some estimates up to 7.5 percent of the total population), largely located in the northwestern province of Esmeraldas. It would be during the late 1970s and as part of a growing interest among scholars for the study of the coextensive relationship among African-descended authors in the Caribbean and the Latin American mainland, rooted in an underlying Africanist poetics, that led to the founding of organizations such as the Afro-Ecuadorian Studies Center in Quito in 1979, the publication of the short-lived but important Meridiano negro: Una Revista de los Afro-ecuatorianos (1980), the founding of The Afro-Hispanic Institute at Howard University in 1981, and the subsequent establishment of the Afro-Hispanic Review (1978-) that would lead to the discovery, rediscovery, and dissemination of the works of Afro-Ecuadorian authors such as Aldaberto Ortiz (1914-2004), author of Juyungo (1942), and Nelson Estupinan Bass (1912-2002). It was, in fact, the Afro-Hispanic Review that served as the primary venue for publications by and about Estupinan Bass beginning in the 1980s and continuing unabated to the present. Critical articles, interviews, book reviews and translations of his works appeared that in many ways shaped his canonical status. Henry J. Richards also published the opening chapters of Al norte de Dios under the title Lucifer: The Other Son of God in the Spring 2003 issue of the Review (22.1, pp. 78-94).Estupinan Bass was a towering presence within the African Diaspora and is clearly the most renowned Afro-Ecuadorian writer of the twentieth century. In addition to poetry,drama, essays, and short stories, he authored ten novels, which masterfully combine literary experimentation with a strong sense of social justice. It is for his work as a novelist that he is primarily recognized in the broader context of Latin American literature. He published ten novels over the course of four decades: Cuando los guayacanes florecian (1954), El paraiso (1958), El ultimo rio (1966), Senderos brillantes (1974), Las puertas del verano (1978), Toque de queda (1978), Bajo el cielo nublado (1981), El crepusculo (1992), Los canarios pintaron el aire amarillo (1993), and Al norte de Dios (1994). His literary reputation to some extent rests on his first six novels, in which he imaginatively mined a set of thematic constants relating to the oppression of Afro-Ecuadorians, economic exploitation, and class struggle: themes that both reflect his Marxist ideology (he spent long periods in both the Soviet Union and China) and his position as a black man within the context of Ecuadorian society. …
Referência(s)