Review of “Life of Che: An Impressionistic Biography”

The story of this book is almost as extraordinary as the story of Che Guevara’s life. As told in the afterword by Pablo Turnes, Vida del Che was first published in January 1969, two years after Guevara’s death, by Argentinian publisher Jorge Álvarez. At the time, Argentina was ruled by a military junta, so publishing…

The End of Hunger? A Great Writer Reviews the Evidence

Humans have been hungry for a long time. The 4,000-year-old tomb of Ankhtifi holds the inscription “All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children.” The traces of our ancient hunger are left in Paleolithic skeletons: a rough winter or a poor harvest shows…

Two new pieces published in The Bored Friday Project: Volume 5

“The Bored Friday Project” is an independent journal of original artwork, photographs, poetry and prose collated and edited by Curtis Pink. Volume Five, which came out in July 2020, is dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement. It contains excellent work by the likes of Heather Steinmann, Matthew Leonard Brown, and Laura Ramnarace, and two…

Six Short Pieces for Jimmy Santiago Baca: a review of Baca’s “Laughing in the Light”

(Re)birth: Jimmy finds a new meaning for the word “sentence” When Jimmy Santiago Baca was in his early twenties and serving time in a high-security prison, a Good Samaritan from the outside world—Henry Gould—wrote to him. Gould ran a soup kitchen. His legs had been blown off during World War II, but his heart was…

“Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall” – by Daniel Chacón

Daniel Chacón begins his latest collection of short stories with a metafictional device. He tells us how to read the book. We can read the stories in order or skip around, following themes. The device is borrowed from Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (translated as Hopscotch), a masterpiece in 155 chapters, the final 99 of which can…

Twelve New Books with Social Justice Themes

1. Decolonization: A Short History by Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel (Princeton University Press) Decolonization examines the consequences of European, Japanese and American decolonization from World War I to the 1990s. It details the dramatic collapses of long-established imperial regimes, some in peace, others in a torrent of blood, and describes the long shadow cast…

The King and Queen of Comezón by Denise Chavez

What a carnal novel this is. Three hundred pages of bodily functions and dysfunctions. A book full of seepages and oozings and assorted excretions: the housemaid farting in the bath, characters urinating on themselves, an undocumented border crosser having her period at just the wrong moment, the untold joys of defecation, projectile vomiting in a…

“Damnificados” to be published, Sept 2015

Good news. My novel, Damnificados, will be published by PM Press in September 2015. The novel is based on the true story of the Tower of David in Caracas, Venezuela. This structure stood in the heart of the city, unfinished and empty. Its owner, David Brillembourg, a millionaire businessman, died before it was completed, and…