I overall enjoyed the message of this book and what it taught me, and I appreciated that it was a very quick read. As I often do, I loved the descriptions in this novel, particularly on p. 87, the little red fruits that “when they hit their target they’d disintegrate…staining the victim’s clothes with what […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with identity, past, power
The fact that the title of this very book is “Book of Chameleons”, should send red flags all over, after all this is, in fact, not a book about chameleons. Chameleons are the symbol of masking, of a facade, I mean that’s how they survive in nature. It’s quite on brand that there are no […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with animals, fiction, identity, memory
One thing that stood out to me most when reading The Book of Chameleons was the idea of identity and how it is seen as something malleable. In the book, identities can be changed, created, or invented from nothing. Félix Ventura’s job is literally creating new identities for his clients. In this way, the book […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with identity, memory, storytelling
I see before me pieces of the human condition, bound together by the umbrella of a narrative that does not quite make any sense. Names reel in and out of sight, like stars in a black river flowing tear-like across the immensely lonely regions of the wo…
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with fiction, Home, identity, life, literature, memory, reality
Hi blog!! Last week was my week off from reading for this class, and it was both weird and relaxing. Weird because I got used to reading a whole book every weekend, and relaxing because I had 3 midterms the week before and my Latin 301 midterm last Friday, so my brain desperately needed the […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with crime, family, identity, love, Money to Burn, politics, power, relationships, sexuality, violence
*post contains F and T-slurs I enjoyed this book a lot, it was a thrilling read from start to finish and I was always interested in what would happen next in the robbery and pursuit. I also enjoyed it as it being explicitly queer with the Kid and Dorda annd those elements caught my eye; […]
Posted in Blogs, Piglia | Tagged with crime, fiction, gender, identity, representation, sexuality
This short story left me very confused and disoriented, with not much to grasp onto and characters also losing it, like Ioana gesturing towards hidden conspiracies and death that had existed So it was relieving to know that the confusion and paranoia and gradual descent into madness is a feature, not a bug, of the […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with Authoritarianism, identity, language, politics, representation
Macabéa, ridiculed, bullied, deemed irrelevant. She “wasn’t an idiot but she had the pure happiness of idiots” (60). She “got up early in order to have more time to do nothing” (26). She “didn’t know what she was just as a dog doesn’t know it’s dog” (19). She was “a hair in the soup [that] […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with gender, identity, poverty, writing
THE WRITER: The desire for transcendence is itself a transcendent aspect of human nature, because it entails an already-present awareness of the transcendent, and a recognition of the possibility of becoming transcendent. The writer, Rodrigo, desires f…
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with death, fiction, Home, identity, life, Lispecter, literature, love, reality, reflection, The hour of the star
After reading “The Time of the Doves” by Merce Rodoreda, I enjoyed how deeply personal and intimate Natalia’s voice feels like as the novel throughout presents her life not only through dramatic events but through small, everyday struggles that slowly build into something heavy and overwhelming. I realized as well how powerful simplicity can be […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with identity, merce Rodoreda, resilience, war
