Category Archives: Ames Highlights

For our last Theme Thursday event highlighting Hispanic Heritage month, we consider the authors and poets who gave voice to people experiencing the political, cultural, and financial turmoil made real by the revolutions of their time.

Pablo Neruda was an important Chilean poet and politician. In the years following Neruda’s service as consular in Mexico, he developed his artist voice. During his service Neruda became immersed in the philosophy, goals, and consequences of the Mexican revolution and was well acquainted with muralismo and its proponents. His early works were mostly love poems, but as he matured and gained life experience he began to write and think more politically. His poetry gave a voice to a population that felt ignored by their government and by the upper classes. The poems gave courage and pride to the struggling working class. Chilean workers memorized his works by heart and gathered to hear their poet recite his writing.

Song of Protest by Pablo Neruda, translated and with an introduced by Miguel Algarín

The essential Neruda: Selected poems, edited by Mark Eisner; translated by Mark Eisner

Affectionately known as “Gabo,” Colombian novelist, screenwriter and journalist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of Latin America’s most iconic figures of modern literature. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his collective work “in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.” Forever inquisitive, critical and creative, Garcia Marquez was not only a key figure of literature in the region, but was an important figure in leftist politics. Garcia Marquez’s story is heavily linked to Cuba, its socialist revolution and the late leader Fidel Castro. Known as a prolific reader, Fidel was known to read and correct Garcia Marquez’s manuscripts before they were sent to be published.

While Garcia Marquez drew inspiration from Cuba’s revolution in his writing, the pair did not always agree. At times the novelist was critical of Fidel’s views, in particular surrounding the Cold War and his support for the Soviet Union.

Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel García Márquez; translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman

Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez; estudio introductorio, Gabriel García Márquez y sus Cien años de soledad por Joaquín Marco

La aventura de Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile by Gabriel García Márquez

The House of Spirits was Isabel Allende’s debut novel. The story details the life of the Trueba family, spanning four generations, and tracing the post-colonial social and political upheavals of Chile – though the country’s name, and the names of figures closely paralleling historical ones, such as “the President” or “the Poet”, are never explicitly given. The story is told mainly from the perspective of two protagonists (Esteban and Alba) and incorporates elements of magical realism. Read this and other publications of hers, available from the library.

Afrodita: Cuentos, recetas y otros afrodisíacos por Isabel Allende ; ilustraciones, Robert Shekter ; recetas, Panchita Llona

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Aphrodite: A memoir of the senses by Isabel Allende ; drawings, Robert Shekter ; recipes, Panchita Llona ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Want to read other Latin American authors who were influenced by revolutions? Check out some of these authors.

Continuing Theme Thursday focusing on revolutions related to Hispanic Heritage month, we move to Venezuela. The Bolivarian Revolution was a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The “Bolivarian Revolution” is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the “Bolivarian Revolution” seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism, popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar’s ideas from a socialist perspective.

Check out some of these books on Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution.

Venezuela: Hugo Chávez and the decline of an “exceptional democracy”

Hugo Chávez: Socialist for the twenty-first century

Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Populism and democracy in a globalised age

Marxist thought in Latin America

In addition to print collections, the library provides access to streaming videos through several sources. This video, Venezuela: From the Inside Out, is “a voyage into Latin America’s most exciting experiment of the new millennium, exploring the history and projects of the Bolivarian Revolution through interviews with a range of its participants, from academics to farm workers and those living in the margins of Caracas. This introduction to the “revolucion bonita” (“pretty revolution”) offers in-depth interviews, unforgettable images and a lively soundtrack that will open new vistas onto this hopeful human project. As he totes his camera on bus and car trips all over Venezuela, director Clifton Ross becomes our tour guide through the Bolivarian Revolution. He sweeps us through its history and takes us to its works-in-progress on the ground. These schools, rural lending banks and cooperatives weave the fabric of Venezuela’s “Socialism of the 21st Century.” They show its failures and successes, its warp and woof. Through it all runs the frayed but unbreakable thread of a people in struggle. Ross is a freelance writer and videographer who has been reporting on revolutionary movements in Latin America for over 25 years (description taken from Kanopy).”

Revolutions change everything about a people. Cultures shift, governments change, the actual infrastructure may be compromised, but in addition to all of the tangible changes, revolutions have massive effects on the arts. Music, film, literature, visual arts, performing arts, poetry…everything can be effected.

In this Theme Thursday, we continue to highlight Hispanic heritage, but we choose to focus not on the politics of a revolution, but how artistic communities experience and reflect on revolution. The American side of the story of our history with Cuba is pretty well known, but we’ve learned so much in time since political relations were restored. Combining this new access with scholars and artists who were permitted to visit prior to the lifted embargo, we can see how rich the arts were in Cuba under Castro.

This documentary, available through Kanopy, reframes the Cuban revolution through the art of photography, focusing on the personal stories of five Cuban photographers whose lives and work span nearly five decades of revolution in Cuba. From Havana to Miami, photographers on both sides of the political divide reveal the Cuban people’s resilient struggle for self-determination. Whether it is the passionate resistance of the revolutionary, or the individual artist’s struggle to emerge as an independent voice in a collective society, the photographers in REVOLUCION reveal the defiance of revolutionaries and artists alike, and discover the power of art to liberate.

This book, which can be checked out from Ames, discusses the works of a prominent Cuban film artist. The films of Tomas Gutierrez Alea (1928-1996) have always defined the limits of expression in revolutionary Cuba. This book is a thorough introduction to Cuba’s most prominent filmmaker. It covers all of Alea’s twelve feature films, with special emphasis on Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), The Last Supper (1976), and Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). Not only are these considered his best films, but each is also symptomatic of an identifiable period in revolutionary Cuba – the period of triumph and affirmation in the 1960s, the period of consolidation and institutionalization in the 1970s, and the period of crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Cubans remained intent on reinforcing a Cuban identity rooted in its own culture, as exemplified by the work of Grupo Antillano. The simultaneous assimilation or synthesis of the tenets of modern western art and the development of Afro-Cuban art schools and movements created a new Cuban culture. This book, also available through Ames, offers the first comprehensive study of Grupo Antillano which thrived between 1978 and 1983 and has been written out of Cuban cultural and art history.

Check out the above resources and many more to learn more about Cuban art before, during, and after the revolution.

Neighboring nations usually become involved in the political events of the lands close by, and the United States during the Mexican Revolution was no exception. For example, during the American Revolution, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, opened a second front to fight the British in the south. His support was instrumental to the U.S. victory. In the Mexican case, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was instrumental in the downfall of Victoriano Huerta and he promoted Carranza against Villa.

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15), we highlight the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution finds its roots in the development of Mexico from 1800 to 1910. Its government ranged from empire to many types of republic, be they centralist or federal. During that time Mexico won its independence from Spain and endured four invasions from four foreign powers – Spain (1829), France (1838), the United States (1846-1848), and one from an alliance of Spain, France, and Great Britain (1862). Ultimately, it became a federal republic governed almost completely from Mexico City with a capitalist economy heavily influenced by foreigners.

The Library of Congress archives and holds materials relevant to the history of the United States. Collections connected to the Mexican Revolution include print and multimedia materials. Check them out on their website, including this really cool interactive map.

Learn more about the Mexican Revolution with the above Library of Congress resources as well as some of these resources available through Ames.

On Theme Thursdays this year we’ll reflect on and consider revolutions everywhere we can find them. Today we consider the Protestant Reformation, which was a major religious revolution.

The Protestant Reformation was the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cultural revolution that splintered Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would define the continent in the modern era. In northern and central Europe, reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and Henry VIII challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian practice. They argued for a religious and political redistribution of power into the hands of Bible- and pamphlet-reading pastors and princes. The disruption triggered wars, persecutions and the so-called Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church’s delayed but forceful response to the Protestants.

Want to learn more? Check out any one of these resources available through Ames Library.

The Protestant Reformation, 1517-1559 by Lewis W. Spitz

John Donne and the Protestant Reformation: New perspectives edited by Mary Arshagouni Papazian

The boy king: Edward VI and the protestant reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Renaissance, the Protestant revolution and the Catholic reformation in continental Europe by Edward Maslin Hulme

The Protestant Reformation translated from the French by Audrey Butler

The annual theme of the 2017-2018 academic year is The Evolution of Revolution. A shared intellectual theme encourages classes to come together to explore a nuanced, intersectional concept. The Ames Library is happy to support faculty and students with diverse collections and access to materials from across the globe. Each Thursday, we’ll feature titles from our collection, which can be checked out by anyone from IWU. Think there’s something we should have, but don’t? Let your librarian know and we’ll work with you to make our collection as representative as possible.

Read the full description of the IWU annual theme here.

Our first featured book was read by all incoming first year, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

From Amazon: In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.