“That’s what we get for supporting Communism: standing in line for this black loaf.”

Contrary to the epic, totalizing, and politically engaged narratives of the Latin American Boom, the scope of the stories here is narrow, intimate, more local than ever before.

References and Further Reading Alves, Miriam.Mulher Mat(r)iz. Belo Horizonte: Nandyala, 2011.Alves, Miriam. Entrevista. Duke, Dawn (Org.). A escritora afro-brasileira: ativismo e arte literária.…

If the literature of a country with the second largest black population worldwide (only Nigeria has a larger black population) does not include that population in its literature, one must ask which Brazil we’re speaking of when we speak of Brazilian…

Politicians know I’m a poet. And that poets face death when their people are oppressed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Ignorance is a kind of blindness.”

According to Barreto himself, the aim of his crusade was to produce a type of literature that he defined as “militante,” engaging with the society’s most pressing issues and communicating these issues to a wider audience in accessible language.

She was furious! She grew silent again, went upstairs, and searched the nightstand. The pistol was there.

A Black man is always somebody's Black man.

Time, lord of the hours / reigns sovereign

This demonstrates how overwhelmingly crude his rhetoric is.

In the current environment of relentless political strife . . . debate deteriorates into name-calling; partisans morph into zealots, complex issues are reduced to binary terms, and hostility seethes just beneath the surface.

Most massacres occurred after Friday prayers.

There were a lot of weapons being brandished, a lot of threats being shouted, and there was a lot of waiting around. The intifada uprising shifted from the streets onto the TV.

“It wasn’t a civil war. It was a rebellion.”

Everyone knew that the way to become a revolutionary was through the Chinese language and not Tibetan.

Those are things you mustn't ask questions about. Some people get sad.

“They shoot them right outside their front door and then send their folks a bill for the bullets.”

They'd take the girls to the hills for three or five days.

I was bound. I was a registered piece of inventory. I was a liability. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The nerve. Everyone cheers for him on the Heldenplatz and then he goes and cuts deals with the Russians.

In Yoko Tawada's dystopian tale, the entire Japanese archipelago is rendered uninhabitable when a fighter plane piloted by a teenager loses control and crashes into a recently reactivated nuclear plant.

I was asked to join Securitate.

Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza portrays a distinctly Balkan Everywhere of blended places and events in this surreal novel excerpt.