Angélica Sánchez (English)

Si Yo Fuera una Canción (If I Were a Song)

Single mother of three sons, Angélica works as a free-lance house cleaner. She speaks about the varieties of nostalgia felt by migrants, and of arriving at a profound gratitude for life.

THEMES AND LINKS

This is a very personal selection—it’s not trying to be comprehensive. We’re always happy to receive suggestions for more themes, items and links!

The Mexican Revolution

There is a huge amount of material about this violent period, still very much alive in the generational memory of modern Mexico. For a basic recounting of events, the Wikipedia article in English is a good starting place; it has a particularly strong bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution

Here is a very personal line-up of works of fiction or political commentary that deal with some human aspects of the Revolution:

POLITICAL HISTORY

Barbarous Mexico, John Kenneth Turner, 1909

NOVELS (these are all translations from Spanish)

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs (1916/1929)

Agustín Yáñez, The Edge of the Storm (1947/1963)

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962/1964)

FILM

¡Viva Zapata! (1952), no less than Marlon Brando as Zapata.

Roger Bartra on Mexican melancholy (a translation from Spanish):

The Cage of Melancholy (1987/1992)

Please, if you buy a book recommended here, DON’T USE AMAZON. We recommend Powell’s Books, https://www.powells.com/ Their selection is awesome, they’ll order what they don’t have, and their mail-order service is fast and reasonable.