Raquel Chang-Rodríguez

The essays included in Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa celebrate Mario Vargas Llosa’s visits to The City College of New York, the creation of the Cátedra Vargas Llosa in his honor, and the interests of the Peruvian author in reading and books. This volume contains previously unpublished material by Vargas Llosa himself, as well as by novelists and literary critics associated with the Cátedra.

A combination of literary analyses and anecdotal contributions in this volume reveal the little-known human and intellectual dimensions of Vargas Llosa the writer and Vargas Llosa the man.

Literatura y cultura en el Virreinato del Perú: apropiación y diferencia is the second volume of a new six-volume literary history of Peru, a project directed by Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, and Marcel Velaszquez Castro. In a variety of essays written by national and international scholars, this illustrated volume offers a wide panorama of the 17th and 18th centuries. Recorded festivities, dramatic representations as well as secular and religious poetry and prose in both Spanish and Quechua, are analyzed in order to underscore the singular context in which a unique culture developed. The contributions of key personalities (Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and Juan de Espinosa Medrano) are attended to in individual essays devoted to their writings. 

Raquel Chang-Rodriguez and Nancy Vogeley, editors and translators

Few English-speaking readers are familiar with the life or the writings of the sixteenth-century Franciscan chronicler Luis Jerinimo de Ore, particularly his neglected Relacion, about the early Spanish presence in territories now part of the United States. His account of La Florida - an area that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included present-day Florida as well as territory north to Virginia and west into Kansas - reflects the desire of the Spanish Crown and various religious orders to explore and to establish a presence in the region. This edition of Luis Jerinimo de Ores work presents readers with a new introduction and an annotated translation that place the text in the broader context of international politics. The narrative develops our understanding of the early Spanish presence in the continental United States while documenting frontier life and the contacts with Native Americans in the South and along the Eastern Seaboard.

This market-leading anthology features the most distinguished authors of Spanish-American literature from the pre-colonial period to the present. Introductory essays and literary selections, combined with historical and literary references, make this book an invaluable resource. Through detailed essays that focus on each historical period, this fifth edition provides the necessary background information to effectively study, analyze and evaluate literary works.

Cartografía Garcilasista offers an insightful analysis of the three works penned by the Peruvian chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega: Relacion de la descendencia de Garci Perez de Vargas, La Florida del Inca, and Comentarios reales. Emphasizing Garcilaso's singular position as the first American historian of the Americas, the author points to shared themes in the writings and connects them to Peruvian and European reality. Accessible to specialists as well as generalists interested in colonial culture, the book includes a chronology, thirty-three illustrations, and a general bibliography.

RAQUEL CHANG-RODRI­GUEZ AND MALVA E. FILER, EDS.

The fourth edition of this leading anthology features the most distinguished works of Spanish-American literature from the precolonial period to the present. Its detailed introductory essays, combined with the literary selections, updated bibliographies, and many historical and cultural references, make the book an invaluable resource for all those interested in the literature of Spanish America. The new edition features revised essays as well as new selections from Julio Cortázar, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa and the addition of several new authors: Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Mari­a Rosa Lojo, Carmen Boullosa, Antonio Jose Ponte, and Edmundo Paz Soldan. Malva E. Filer (Prof., Brooklyn) serves on the doctoral faculty in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center.

Royal Commentaries (1609, 1617) by Garcilaso de la Vega Inca, the first great Spanish-American writer and the first American historian of the Americas, is considered a key text to understand Inca civilization as well as the impact of Spanish colonialism in the New World. The eleven essays collected in Entre la espada y la pluma include a study by Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Prize winner in literature, and other leading authorities in history, literature, and anthropology on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the publication in Lisbon (1609) of this chronicle. Their interdisciplinary research and the introduction by the editor offer a distinct approach to rereading this fundamental book, one that strives to place it within a larger cultural context and underscores its modernity.

The Discourse in Praise of Poetry (1608) and the Epistle to Belardo (1621) attributed to Clarinda and Amarilis, two women poets whose identity is unknown, are considered genuine treasures of Peruvian and Hispanic lyric poetry. This modernized and annotated Spanish edition by Raquel Chang-Rodriguez-accompanied by a preliminary study, an extensive bibliography, the exchanges with Diego Mexi­a de Fernangil and Lope de Vega, and the facsimiles of each work-makes the uniqueness of these female voices accessible to general and specialized readers. In the detailed introduction, the editor places these poets in a singular cultural context by referring to current developments in gender studies and to their impact in America and Spain.

In this book, Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, noted scholar of Hispanic Studies, explores the formation of the literary and cultural personality of Spanish America from the vantage point of poetic developments. Using carefully selected voices that span the colonial period, she introduces readers to the poetry sung and written in the Americas both before and after the arrival of the Europeans. The texts are accompanied by clearly written essays that serve to underscore the similarities with and differences from foreign models. Additionally, they describe the struggle to achieve a distinct poetic expression within the peculiarities marking colonial societies and its diverse subjects. The texts have been carefully annotated by the editor and reveal the varied strains that have shaped Spanish American literature and its rich tradition. 

This volume, which appeared simultaneously in the United States and Peru, in English and Spanish, collects the essays presented by leading scholars at an interdisciplinary symposium, sponsored by CUNY's City College and The Graduate Center, inaugurating the celebration of the fourth centennial of the 1605 publication in Lisbon of La Florida del Inca. In this chronicle Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador, offers the history of Hernando de Soto's journey (1539-43) into a vast territory then known as La Florida. The book includes ten essays, an introduction, a chronology, a general bibliography, and 55 illustrations. 

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In her latest wide-ranging study, Chang-Rodri­guez offers an intriguing, in-depth exploration of an illustrated chronicle completed by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in 1615. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the author elucidates the text and stresses the unique ability of Guaman Poma de Ayala (a native Andean historian) to combine words and images to depict his legacy. Chang-Rodri­guez explores such legal and social debates as the rights of conquest, the position of the native population, the clash of traditions, and the qualifications of colonial administrators in the viceroyalty of Peru.

Voces de Hispanoamerica: Antologia literaria features the most distinguished authors of Spanish-American literature from the Pre-Colonial period to the present. Through annotated selections, biographical essays, and detailed essays that focus on each historical period, the book provides the necessary background to effectively study and analyze key literary works. The discussions presented by Chang-Rodri­guez and Filer emphasize how writers, shaped in many instances by Native-American, European, African, and Asian traditions, speak with universal voices. Voces de Hispanoamerica: Antologia literaria is edited by Raquel Chang-Rodriguez and Malva E. Filer, professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian literatures and languages at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College.