A topic in the American Dirt controversy was the ways in which Mexican, Mexican American and Chicanx literatures are marginalized from publishing. But as a scholar of Mexican literature written in Mexico in Spanish, there are complexities here (thread with book recommendations)
As a I mentioned elsewhere, the Mexican and the Mexican American literary fields are distinct and often even unfamiliar with each other. And the colleagues of #DignidadLiteraria are doing an admirable work in addressing the marginalization of Mexican American lit.
But the fact is that Mexican literature written in Spanish, most of it from Mexico (the literature in indigenous languages is a very complex theme that would require a thread by am expert) is by and large unknown in the US, and was unavailable until very recently.
Because Mexican literature from Mexico faces two problems specific to it. Problem 1 is that as a literature in translation, it is silenced by the proverbial provincialism of US editors, booksellers and readers for whom translation is a minimal percentage of their activity.
Problem 2 is that Mexican literature (as I hope you would expect) is a (Trans)national literature with all kinds of genres and topics, but because of the narrow idea of Mexican culture based on its stereotypes that the US holds, Mexican writing about things other than Mexican...
stuff are very uninteresting to publishers and readers who think Global South writers should be native informants and nothing else. The idea of cosmopolitan Mexican writers, Mexican writers not just writing about Mexicanness, that blows people's minds
Many of my writer friends have mentioned that US publishers do not want to read their books because they are not Mexican enough. It is like in cinema, the most popular Mexican films are rom coms but you would not know that if you follow "world cinema"
So now that venues have bothered to say that people should read Mexicans, it is not surprising that vast majority of the great recommendations are books published originally in English. Here is a great list. texasobserver.org/17-great-books…
unfamiliar readers, however, would not know that Mexican literature goes beyond immigration and as a matter of fact, Mexican writers often resist being so topical.
So I decided to put here a list of Mexican books translated from Spanish that show as much as possible some of the thematic breadth of the literature. I restrict this list to books published in the past few years, available in English in a good translation
I will forewarn though that the fact that they are written by Mexicans does not mean that Mexican readers and critics are not fiercely divided by many of them. Many have raised controversies, but there are debates that do not undermine the base quality of the works or the authors
Please also note that I do not include the Luiselli, Herrera and Xilonen books in the list above to avoid repetition, but I do endorse them
And also, if you wish to order or read these books, please buy them and do so from an independent bookstore, or borrow them from a library. these helps booksellers and librarians to do better in having Mexican books in stock. The list is not exhaustive so feel free to add.
Sergio Pitol was Mexico's most revered cosmopolitan writer. His Trilogy of Memory is an astonishingly beautiful group of essay/narratives on his times in Eastern Europe. Also available, his amazing short stories. deepvellum.org/authors/sergio…
Carmen Boullosa is a prolific writer of books in different genres. Deep Vellum has three of which the highlight is Texas on the 1859 Mexican invasion of the US. People also love Heavens of Earth and Before: deepvellum.org/authors/carmen…
Boullosa also has a beautiful novel based on Anna Karenina, to be published soon by Coffee House: coffeehousepress.org/products/the-b…
A favorite of mine is Julian Herbert, who published two really major books now available in English. One is his memoir Tomb Song, around the death of her mother, a prostitute who took her family across Mexico, graywolfpress.org/books/tomb-song
and the other the astonishing The House of the Pain of Others, an unclassifiable essay/chronicle on a massacre of Chinese immigrants in Torreón, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution, as well as the legacy of this massacre in Mexican modernity. graywolfpress.org/books/house-pa…
My neighbors at Dorothy published Cristina Rivera Garza's Taiga Syndrome, a metaphysical noir of great intelligence and beauty. dorothyproject.com/book/the-taiga…
Rivera Garza also has The Iliac Crest, a novel on the recovery of a revered but forgotten woman novelist, Amparo Dávila. feministpress.org/books-a-m/the-…
Speaking of Dávila, you can read her uncanny stories too. ndbooks.com/author/amparo-…
A couple of years ago Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season shattered the Mexican literary world and was almost unanimously found to be the book of the year. This powerful novel will soon be out in English: ndbooks.com/book/hurricane…
If you like experimental literature, you cannot do better than reading Verónica Gerber Bicecci, a writer and visual artist. Her "Empty Set" is available: coffeehousepress.org/products/empty…
Finally, classic Mexican literature is very much out of print, and in many cases mistranslated, but do not miss this powerful book, Jose Revueltas's The Hole, the classic of Mexican prison literature, freshly translated. ndbooks.com/book/the-hole/…
If you go to your independent bookseller or librarian and request a book in my list, and a book in The Texas Observer list, or maybe more, or maybe others, you will be contributing to better quality lit about Mexico to be available and economically viable for publishers.
