Tiempo de narrar. Cuentos centroamericanos. (A Time to Tell: Central American Short Stories)
Reviewed by Catherine Rendón, Savannah, GA -- Críticas, 1/15/2008
Méndez, Francisco Alejandro, ed.
Guatemala: Piedra Santa, dist. by Books Beyond Borders. 2007. 312p. ISBN 978-99922-1-204-2. pap. $29.95. FICTION
Méndez (b.1964), one of Guatemala’s more prolific contemporary short story writers, is not only a master of the genre but also a journalist and academician with a passion for and deep-rooted curiosity about his native Central America. In this rich anthology, he gathers new as well as more-established voices from the isthmus. Among the latter are Guatemalan Rodrigo Rey Rosas (b. 1958), whose work may be familiar to U.S. readers given the many translations of his short stories by Paul Bowles, and Nicaragua’s former vice president, Sergio Ramírez (1942), whose work has also been extensively translated into English. Among the 35 short stories presented here are tales of fantasy with overtones of the likes of Philip K. Dick, as in Guatemalan Estuardo Paniagua’s (b.1965) “La conciencia, la última frontera” (“The Mind, Our Ultimate Frontier”). Many of the writers cannot help but portray much of the violence and civil war they grew up in, evident in their narratives. Particularly effective are two Guatemalans, Mildred Hernandez [“Paranoica city” (“Paranoic City”)] and Javier Mosquera [“El domingo hay que consagrarlo al Senor” (“Sundays Must Be Offered to the Lord”)], as well as Salvadoran Rafael Menjivar Ochoa [“El cubano” (“The Cuban”)]. Baseball, sex, rock and rock, and other echoes of U.S. pop culture are sprinkled throughout, reminding us that Central America has not only suffered from its big neighbor’s foreign policy but been besotted with its other exports. There remains, however, a hard core of grittiness and direct language that can belong to no other Spanish-speaking region, making this anthology an appealing and welcome addition to the genre. Méndez explains that this anthology does not seek a unifying theme but instead offers a view of the region’s diversity. This fresh and excellent anthology, which includes short biographies on the contributing authors, is highly recommended for all libraries.
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