Bildung 11

Soon, however, an issue arose: as hard as I fought this realization, it was becoming pretty clear to me that I didn’t like reading Latin American literature.

I felt like there was an enormous wall standing between me and the world, and every new thing I read and learned was drilling holes in that wall. Eventually, I thought, the wall would disappear and I’d understand how things – all things, together and separately – worked. I felt an overwhelming longing for the moment when the wall would fall down and I’d know. Just know.

So everything that helped me chip at the wall was sacred, although some parts of the experience were more pleasant than others. I still had a great intellectual curiosity for Latin America but I was not enjoying reading its literature. The entirety of Latin American literature revolves, in my opinion, around the endless and robotic insistence on the inferiority of women.

Dreiser and the rest of realists I gulped down in my childhood and youth spoiled me: as much as I appreciate the form, I always read for content. And all of the beauty of the Latin American writing can’t compensate for my contempt for its content. Fate smiled on me and by the time I entered my Senior year in college and had to choose a specialization, our only real Latin Americanist left, so I was forced to make the choice that was undoubtedly the best for me and concentrate on Spain.