SPAN 312C

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Week 12: Papi by Rita Indiana

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing fantastic, Rita Indiana's "Papi" was a captivating read for me this week as it examines the complex interrelationship between a father and his daughter. The story, which is told from the daughter's point of view and reflects on her recollections of her father and their relationship, was oddly liberating to me. I was able to imagine myself in her place since I, too, had tense recollections of my father. The daughter reveals her father as a multifaceted figure who struggles with addiction throughout the course of the narrative and is both successful and fatally flawed. She is determined to fully understand her father better despite his many imperfections. Yet, the daughter has an unquestioningly profound love and adoration for her father. This caused me to embrace my connections with my father and also helped me to understand the deeper significance (in a positive way!). Regarding the bond between the father

Week 11: Distant Star

Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing great. This novel's brief length made me very happy because I'm starting to feel my brain erode from this semester. Compared to the several previous books I've chosen to read, it felt relatively light and less complicated, but I'm not complaining. In addition, the novel's fictional depictions of 1970s history, politics, and people were incredibly enjoyable to me. I thought Bolano's interpretation of the book's magical realism and surrealist parts worked incredibly well for it. He included awe and a dreamy atmosphere, allowing me to fully immerse myself in the narrative. Furthermore, Bolano's elements helped me visualize the characters' uncertainty and disorientation because the book is set in the 1970s in Chile, a time in which the current state of affairs was highly explosive. In addition, I really like the connection to memories. The novel takes memory and dives into how it can shape the percept

Week 10: I, Rigoberta Menchú

Hey everyone! I hope all is well, I had a good experience sitting down to read this week's reading of I, Rigoberta Menchú. Despite the fact that what Rigoberta Menchú revealed was rather heartbreaking, the story was presented in a way that was easy to understand while still being interesting. There are moments in life when we realize that, in comparison to other people's situations, all of the challenges and "suffering" we face are little. For example, I have grumbled about how "difficult" my life is since I attend UBC and only make the minimum wage, which is insufficient to cover my tuition and the $1800 rent on my lovely apartment. But then I read this novel. I started to see that perhaps all of my hard times weren't as difficult as I had previously believed. The book "I, Rigoberta Menchu" was very eye-opening and caused me to reconsider my viewpoints. It touches on issues including racial inequity, exploitation, violence, and more

Week 9: Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

Hey everyone, I hope your weekend was good! I chose to read the novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa. However, due to the themes of corruption, force, piety, and sexual exploitation, this wasn't the book for me. This may be biased, but I didn't appreciate this reading, especially how women were portrayed and seen. In my judgment, the way the novel commonly portrays the female characters is misogynistic, demeaning, and in some ways, validates highly harmful gender standards. Directly speaking, women are portrayed as objects to be exploited for male desire and their sexual fulfillment without even any respect for the well-being of the women. I can get how this book might be deemed comedic, and there were points when I did find myself amused at the satire, but I felt the book to be grim, and the humour didn't seem appropriate for the subject. It was almost uncomfortable for me. Even with my critical eye, I did enjoy and respect ho

Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude Pt. 2

Hey everyone! The second half of Garcia Marquez's book was interesting for this week's text. My puzzlement grew as I read further into the book. But I enjoyed the narrative and am glad I read it because I would not have chosen it otherwise. There are various themes in this book. Still, the two primary ones are the time continuum and how memory can alter our perspective of the past. Time, in the book, is circular. Which means it has repeating and recurring themes and characters intertwined in the story. While reading, the view of reality is tested by the concept of magical realism, which clarifies the distinction between what is real and what is imagined. In the story, I appreciated how isolated the Buendia family felt, even though they were close to one another. Both physically and mentally, the characters frequently feel cut off from their surroundings and experience a sensation of loneliness. The quote, "he made one last effort to search in his heart for the plac

Week 7: Garcia Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Part 1)

Hey everyone! I hope all is well, When reading this book, the usage of magical realism really captured my attention. Garcia Marquez's prose was lovely, especially the poetic precision. He hooks readers into the lives of the Buendia family across several generations by constructing a colourful and captivating universe in the fictional village of Macondo. The novel's characters are also very unforgettable, and I found them to be believable due to their quirks and peculiarities. Perhaps someone from my own life. The story gains a fantastical element from the magical realism components, giving it a sense of both realism and the ethereal. The themes of the book, such as time's relentless flow and the idea of such humanity's "solitude," have a strong emotional resonance for me. However, the novel's exploration of the relationship between imagination and reality, as well as the connection seen between self and group, provides much more to cogitate. &quo