Spanish Literature

Esmeralda’s family relocates from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn in 1961, when Esmeralda is 13 years old. On the cusp of womanhood, Esmeralda receives warnings from her family members, and especially her mother, Mami, to watch out for the many algos or dangers lurking in the city. Struggling to adjust to city life in Brooklyn, Esmeralda misses Puerto Rico, and she dreams of the day when she will return. Initially put into remedial classes because she... Read Almost a Woman Summary

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And the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Chicano-American author Tomás Rivera was originally published as a Spanish and English bilingual edition in 1971, translated into English by Herminio Ríos. Evangelina Vigil-Piñón’s translation, considered the definitive one, came out in 1988. The book was awarded the Quinto Sol Prize for literature and was adapted into a film. Born in Texas, Rivera,was himself the son of Mexican migrant farm workers, and worked on farms as a... Read And The Earth Did Not Devour Him Summary

Sandra Benitez’s A Place Where the Sea Remembers was originally published in 1993 and won the 1994 Minnesota Book Award. Benitez grew up in Mexico, El Salvador, and Missouri, and she currently lives in Minnesota. Her novel is set in the small seaside town of Santiago, Mexico, and focuses on the lives of the town’s residents. A Place Where the Sea Remembers falls into the genre known as magical realism, a narrative strategy employed by... Read A Place Where the Sea Remembers Summary

A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath (2004) is a true-crime story and memoir by Jeanine Cummins. The book recounts the violent rape and murder of two young women, Julie and Robin Kerry, the author’s cousins, and focuses on the aftermath for their families. Tom Cummins, their cousin who is present during the crimes, is thrown off a bridge into the Mississippi River with the two women but survives. Innocent, he... Read A Rip in Heaven Summary

Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a primary source on the genocide of indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization of the Americas. This account of Las Casas, who spent much of his life in the New World, specifically spans the years 1509-1542, with some reference to the years between 1542 and 1552, when the book was published. The text mostly details events that occurred in present-day... Read A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies Summary

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The autobiography of Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls, details his life as a gay man under Fidel Castro’s regime and the consequences of his dissidence. It was published posthumously in 1993. Immediately named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, it has since been adapted into a movie and, later, an opera. Before Night Falls tells the story of Arenas’s life growing up in a... Read Before Night Falls Summary

When Julia Alvarez’s Before We Were Free (2002) begins, the life of Anita de la Torre, an 11-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic, is about to change forever. The novel investigates themes of family, government corruption, superstition, and the power of the written word, all set against the backdrop of the months before and after the assassination of a brutal dictator, Rafael Trujillo. This study guide uses the 2007 Laurel Leaf Reprint Edition.Plot SummaryDuring the... Read Before We Were Free Summary

Blood Wedding, a Spanish rural tragedy, was written by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1932 while he was director of the travelling theater company Teatro Universitario La Barraca. The play was first performed at Teatro Beatriz in Madrid in 1933 under the title Bodas de Sangre. It ran briefly in America on Broadway in 1935, where it was retitled Bitter Oleander. It was not well received; the passions and folkloric culture in the play were too... Read Blood Wedding Summary

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Breaking Through, an autobiography by Francisco Jimenez, is a work of juvenile literature that was published in 2001. The book records the childhood experiences of the author as he struggles to become familiar with American culture, and has been awarded a number of prizes, including The Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and the Pura Belpre Honor Award.The story commences with a description of the then 4-year-old author, his parents, and his older... Read Breaking Through Summary

The first iteration of the novel La Celestina, published anonymously as Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (Comedy of Calisto and Melibea), first appeared in Spain in 1499. In 1500, a law student named Fernando de Rojas revealed himself as the author in a new edition of the text (under the title Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, or Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea), explaining in a prologue that he had discovered the first act already written... Read Celestina Summary

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a 1981 novella by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. Told in non-chronological order and in journalistic fashion by an unnamed narrator, it pieces together the events leading up to and after the murder of Santiago Nasar by Pedro and Pablo Vicario. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a classic example of Márquez's use of magical realism in his writing. The novella has been adapted several times as a film... Read Chronicle of a Death Foretold Summary

The Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was originally written in 1542, with a reprint in 1555. The chronicle follows Cabeza de Vaca’s memories of his survival after the expedition (led by Pánfilo de Narváez) failed and broke apart, and his subsequent peregrinations through the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. His chronicle stands as an important primary document of the age of the conquistadores. Of particular importance are Cabeza... Read Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition Summary

Isabel Allende’s novel City of the Beasts tells the story of Alex Cold, a fifteen-year-old boy from California who accompanies his journalist grandmother on a life-altering journey through the Amazon.  The narrative opens with Alex at home in California, angry and frightened over the illness of his mother, who is undergoing cancer treatment. When his mother gets a chance at receiving a promising new treatment in Texas, Alex’s parents send him to stay with his paternal grandmother, the adventurer... Read City of the Beasts Summary

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Daughter of Fortune, first published in Spanish in 1998 (Hija de la fortuna), is the fifth novel by celebrated Latin American writer Isabel Allende. The winner of multiple awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Chile’s National Literature Prize, Allende created this work of historical fiction, in part, to explore the impact of feminism on her own life. Daughter of Fortune tells the story of a young woman, Eliza Sommers, and her odyssey of... Read Daughter Of Fortune Summary

José Zorrilla y Moral (1817-1893), was a poet, dramatist, and major figure of the nationalist wing of the Spanish Romantic movement. He was born in Valladolid, Spain and educated at the Real Seminario de Nobles, a Jesuit school, and later at the universities of Toledo and Valladolid. Though Zorrilla’s father hoped his son would become a lawyer, Zorrilla left his studies and went to Madrid to pursue a career as a poet. In 1837, he... Read Don Juan Tenorio Summary

Don Quixote is a novel in two parts by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes published between 1605 and 1615. The novel portrays the life of a middle-aged Spanish man who decides to become a knight, just like the characters in the works of fiction he loves. Considered to be a foundational work of Western literature and one of the first modern novels, Don Quixote is one of the most translated books of all time. It... Read Don Quixote Summary

First published in Spanish in 1987, Eva Luna is a novel written by celebrated Chilean writer Isabel Allende and later translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden the following year. The story is set in an unnamed South American country believed to be an amalgamation of Chile and Venezuela. The eponymous Eva Luna narrates the epic story of her life against a backdrop inspired by the sociopolitical changes in South America from the mid-1940s to... Read Eva Luna Summary

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For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is a novel by the Modernist American author Ernest Hemingway. The novel tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American volunteer working as a demolition specialist for the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. Robert, sent to blow up a bridge to aid a Republican offensive, enlists the aid of a band of guerrilla fighters in the mountains. Robert falls in love with a woman in their care... Read For Whom the Bell Tolls Summary

Fuenteovejuna (or Fuente Ovejuna) by Lope de Vega, first published in 1619, takes place and is based on true events that occurred in Spain in 1476. The play opens in Amalgro, where Commander Don Fernán Gómez de Guzmán is meeting with Grand Master Don Rodrigo Téllez Girón to push him to back King Alfonso, rather than Ferdinand and Isabella, in the battle for Spain and take Ciudad Real. Guzmánpledges his soldiers and tells Girón that... Read Fuenteovejuna Summary

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Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a work of fiction written by Moroccan native Laila Lalami and published in 2005. The narrative is comprised of nine stories involving the lives of four major characters, all of whom attempt to emigrate illegally from Morocco to Spain in order to have better lives. Despite the fact that these stories are separate from one another, the book does not represent a short story collection in the classic sense;... Read Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits Summary

Elizabeth Borton de Treviño’s I, Juan de Pareja is a young adult historical fiction novel published in 1965. Its complicated portrayal of slavery, art, and self-expression earned it the Newbery Medal in 1966. In 1656, Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velázquez unveiled his newest portrait: a simple study of one of his enslaved workers entitled Portrait of Juan de Pareja. Upon viewing the painting, de Treviño was inspired to imagine the story of this man... Read I, Juan de Pareja Summary

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“In Praise of Darkness” is a poem, and book, by Jorge Luis Borges. It was originally published in Spanish in 1969, late in Borges’s career—his first book of poetry, Fervor de Buenos Aires, was published in 1923. “In Praise of Darkness,” a free verse poem about Aging and Blindness, The Presence of the Past, and the speaker’s Relationship to Literature, also lists some of Borges’s literary influences, including 19th-century American Transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson... Read In Praise of Darkness Summary

Isabel Allende’s In the Midst of Winter is a novel published in 2017 that follows the alternating perspectives of three immigrants whose lives become intertwined after a car accident during a snowstorm in New York City. This study guide refers to the Kindle edition of the novel.Plot OverviewOne night, during a brutal snowstorm in New York City, Richard Bowmaster is driving home when he accidentally crashes into Evelyn Ortega’s car. While he assumes it is... Read In the Midst of Winter Summary

The novel is set in the Dominican Republic, in both 1994—the “present day”—and during the period of Trujillo’s regime. In 1994, Dedé Mirabal lives in the house where her three sisters—Minerva, Patria and María Teresa—and her family used to live. Her dead sisters are known as the “butterflies,” they are martyrs and national heroes. In 1994, Dedé talks to an interviewer about her sisters’ lives and deaths. Her narrative is interspersed with her own memories... Read In the Time of the Butterflies Summary

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In Manuel Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman, Luis Alberto Molina, a hairdresser, and Valentin Arregui Paz, a Marxist revolutionary, are roommates in a Buenos Aires prison from September to October of 1975. Without the use of a narrative voice, Puig uses dialogue, prison reports, and stream-of-consciousness to tell the story. The majority of the novel is written in dialogue.Molina, serving eight years for the “corruption of minors” is animated and sociable, unlike Valentin... Read Kiss of the Spider Woman Summary

The House of Bernarda Alba: a drama about women in the villages of Spain, or La casa de Bernarda Alba, is a play by Spanish poet, dramatist, and director, Federico García Lorca, that explores themes of sexual repression, inheritance, and violence among three generations of women in rural Spain. The play was Lorca’s last, completed in 1936 only months before his murder at the hands of right-wing nationalist forces at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil... Read La Casa De Bernarda Alba Summary

La vida es sueño, or, Life’s a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, is one of Spain’s most well-known plays. First published and first produced in 1636, during the heyday of Spain’s golden age of literature, Life is a Dream is a play in verse that intertwines a complex family drama with a tale of honor and vengeance. The play begins with a dramatic moment, as Rossaura and her servant, Bugle, happen upon a roughly-built... Read Life Is a Dream Summary

Like Water for Chocolate is the debut novel of Laura Esquivel, published in Mexico in 1989 and then translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. Esquivel has sold over four million copies of the novel worldwide. She is a novelist and active politician serving in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. She collaborated with her husband at the time to adapt the novel into a film in 1992, which was then nominated for a Golden... Read Like Water for Chocolate Summary

Love in the Time of Cholera is a classic work of literary fiction by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. It was published in Spanish in 1985 and translated into English in 1988 by Edith Grossman. The novel was adapted into a film in 2007, which was nominated for several awards including an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Plot SummaryLove in the Time of Cholera is set in... Read Love in the Time of Cholera Summary

Teodoro Golfín, a renowned eye surgeon, has just arrived at the fictional town of Villamojada in Northern Spain in search of the mines of Socrates. At the request of the wealthy Francisco Penáguilas, Teodoro has come to attempt to cure his son, Pablo, of his blindness. On his way to the mines, Teodoro gets lost. He is aided by the arrival of Pablo, who offers to lead Teodoro to the mines where the doctor can... Read Marianela Summary

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Carmen Laforet’s first novel, Nada, tells the coming-of-age story of Andrea, an orphan who moves from a convent in provincial Spain to the city of Barcelona. Published to widespread acclaim in 1945 when Laforet was just 23, the novel won the Premio Nadal literary prize. Known for its artful portrayal of the poverty, class stratification, and domestic struggles many families faced after the Spanish Civil War, Nada paints a realistic portrait of life under Francisco... Read Nada Summary

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Set in the seaport city of Santa María de Antigua, in colonial Spanish Colombia, at the end of the 18th century, Gabriel García Márquez'snovel Of Love and Other Demons tells the tragic story of Sierva María de Todos Los Ángeles. The only daughter of the American-born Marquis de Casalduero, Sierva lives with her father the Marquis, and her mother, Bernarda, in a decaying mansion.Neither parent takes an interest in their daughter, so she's raised by... Read Of Love And Other Demons Summary

One Hundred Years of Solitude, first published in Spanish in 1967 as Cien años de soledad, is an internationally renowned and classic work of literature by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. The most highly regarded English version of the book is Gregory Rabassa’s translation, which was first published in 1970. This guide uses citations from the HarperPerennial Modern Classics Edition, which was released in 2006. García Márquez became the fourth Latin American winner of the... Read One Hundred Years of Solitude Summary

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Open Veins of Latin America (1997) by Uruguayan journalist, writer, and poet Eduardo Galeano is a historical nonfiction book about the political and economic development of Latin America. The book celebrated its 25th year anniversary in 1997 by issuing a new edition; it features additional writing from Galeano reflecting on the book and the state of Latin American politics seven years after the book’s first release. This study guide refers to the 25th year anniversary... Read Open Veins of Latin America Summary