Practicing Memory in Central American Literature (PDF)

NICOLE CASO, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bard College, USA.

"Scholarship on memory and history in Central American literature has tended to focus on the new Central American historical novel and/or the testimonio. By including analyses of short stories and poetry, Caso effectively argues that the space of the text, its form and aesthetic, enhance and reemphasize the author's historical vantage point . . . This is one of the book's greatest contributions to Central American literary studies, as it expands the generic limits of the traditionally studied historical novel and testimonio in the understanding of how the past is represented and problematized through literature." - Latino Studies

"Memory, defined as Caso does, becomes also a powerful tool for the less privileged members of society to resist political impositions intended to create a space racially, politically, and intellectually homogenous.But what seems most remarkable about this book is not only its definition of the term memory but what follows: an innovative comprehension of the role of literature as an instrument for transforming an established idea of history in Central America . . . Caso's reading of the encounter of history and literature in Central America is certainly intelligent, well-written, and structurally solid." - The Latin Americanist

"In this striking book, Caso explores Central American fiction as a productive site to fathom the complex project of Latin American modernity and developmentalism in the twentieth century. She meditates on what it means for a region to be considered an 'isthmus,' a passageway from elsewhere to elsewhere, a small unit of land that stands as a trope for Banana Republics, revolutions, or drug-trafficking. Rather than taking texts in isolation or reading them as representatives of the whole, Caso highlights instances of regional voices, listening to the 'sighs and whispers' that traditional historiographers exclude from their accounts. In Casos's reading, creativity becomes a tool for subverting