Student Blogs

Reading Deep Rivers by José María Arguedas kinda messed with my head. It feels less like learning a story and more like learning how to perceive the world differently. Rather than explaining Peru’s colonial history or Indigenous suffering in direct terms, Arguedas filters everything through Ernesto’s body: what he touches, hears, and feels before he […] read full post >>

Some books gently invite you into their world. Deep Rivers absolutely does not. It grabs you by the shoulders, points at a wall, and says: “This stone is alive. Deal with it.” And honestly? I kind of loved that. José María Arguedas’s Deep Rivers is a novel where nothing stays quiet. Rivers bleed, stones move, […] read full post >>

To me, this book illustrated how colonialism remains deeply embedded across Latin American societies. The main character, Ernesto, is a mestizo (mixed) boy, and as a result, he feels torn between understanding and exploring both sides of his heritage. ... read full post >>

To me, this book illustrated how colonialism remains deeply embedded across Latin American societies. The main character, Ernesto, is a mestizo (mixed) boy, and as a result, he feels torn between understanding and exploring both sides of his heritage. ... read full post >>

Overall a fun-ish read! I think this novel Deep Rivers was very interesting and I especially like the authors descriptive writing style. Throughout the book there was a strong focus on Indigeneity which was shown in many ways. To me the representation of Indigenous culture through nature and music stood out the most. In Ernesto’s […] read full post >>

Ernesto’s connection with nature was something that was evident throughout the book. In particular, his view of the river as an entity really stood out to me. To me, it represents the tension that exists in his life between his connection with the Indigenous peoples and his white identity. It was interesting to me how […] read full post >>

After reading Joseph Zobel’s Black Shack Alley, I admit that I feel quite… devastated? Not in a dramatic, bawling-my-eyes-out kind of way, but in a slow, kind of lingering sadness that has stuck with me even now. Don’t get me wrong, the novel is easy to read on the surface. The prose is clear, and […] read full post >>

This book is tough. The title makes me feel like there will be fascinating adventures, but there are not. The diction is hard to understand as an outsider, hehehe. Another reason this book is difficult to read is that I found the narrator to be less vividly portrayed compared to the books we read before. […] read full post >>

José’s experience is shaped by poverty and colonialism in a way far more extreme than anything I have lived through, but the emotional core felt deeply familiar. read full post >>

Hi Guys! I enjoyed this week’s reading and as we are reading more and more books in this class I feel like it’s becoming easier to read literature. However, I still found this book somewhat difficult to read. I feel like there were a lot of references to Church names, cultural concepts, and traditions which […] read full post >>

Being Peruvian definitely shaped how I read this book. I probably would have enjoyed it even more if it had not been midterm season, but I still ended up liking it a lot. Through Ernesto’s inner conflict you can understand a lot about the society around him. He is mestizo, and because he grew up […] read full post >>

I miss Proust... read full post >>

While reading Black Shack Alley, I kept feeling that what moved me the most was the fact that the world is seen through a child’s eyes. This is not a world that has already been explained or analyzed, but one that is simply felt. Children do not always understand what is happening around them, yet […] read full post >>

Honestly, even though José gets his education and succeeds in life, the whole story made me very sad. I felt sad for M’man Tine, who literally worked herself to death in the sugar cane fields. I felt sad for José’s mother, whom he rarely saw because she was always working somewhere else. I also felt […] read full post >>

The concept of cultural belonging pervades the beginning of the text, where he describes the appearance of the Old Man, enters the native city of Cuzco, and examines the stones of the Inca wall. The narrative style, which lies at the intersection betwe... read full post >>