Another great anonymous question dropped today:
Here’s the thing. García Márquez is a Latin American writer. He’s the founder of much of the literature in the region, either as somebody to imitate or somebody to reject. He’s not Anglo. This isn’t good or bad, it simply is. The concerns you describe come from a different reality. They have a right to exist but I have what I believe is a valuable suggestion to make. You can use art from other regions as an access point to a different mentality. Not to adopt it, because that’s impossible anyway, but to admire the great variety of the universe.
The view of the sexes in Latin America is very different. I find this view to be ridiculous and somewhat embarrassing. But nobody is forcing us to do anything, you know? If you talk to Latin American women who are not in US academia, they’ll tear your hair out if you dare to suggest they aren’t inferior to men. They think they are inferior, and it’s the war of the sexes all day every day. Black, not black, it’s all the same in this respect. This is a culture that never had a Jane Eyre.
Another thing it never had is MLK Jr. In particular, “black women” as an ontological category is not a thing there. It’s not a thing anywhere outside of the US. It’s very hard to transmit the shock one experiences when one comes to the United States and realizes how obsessed, conflicted, and engaged people are with race. Even in Canada, it’s simply not there. The categories for understanding the world are very different.
These are all fascinating issues, so thank you for this great question.
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