“Feels as if a certain kind of writing has been favoured” – The Book of Havana ed. by Orsola Casagrande

"Unfortunately for the collection as a whole, appreciating these moments when they come along is like trying to taste mashed potato when you’ve just eaten a jalfrezi. And the ultimate effect is that it feels, rightly or wrongly, as if a certain kind of writing has been favoured. Cuban writer and professor Mirta Yanez, who published an anthology of Cuban women writers, wrote about ‘an ideological emphasis on "tough" writing’ which kept fiction by Cuban women largely ignored. There’s certainly a lot of tough writing going on here, and maybe what we’re seeing is an upholding of a certain literary tradition. Or maybe it’s a just reflection: maybe extreme times make for extreme writing. Or maybe an outsider is just not sufficiently equipped to navigate the strangeness of the terrain. I have no way of knowing..." - Lucy Chatburn reviews The Book of Havana

from Bookmunch https://ift.tt/2NjvrT3
via IFTTT