When that book came out, it was like Columbus telling about America at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.
We all knew the book well because it's the cult book in Latin America. For me, this was a sacred territory. I would not have ventured into it by myself.
I want this book to be facts, to be important, to be history.
Every book in the 'Dreams' cycle dramatizes a particular epoch in the ongoing cultural collision between North America's native peoples and its European colonizers.
The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.
It's a very good historical book about history.
The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.
I wasn't an academic looking in books for ideas. But I educated myself about historical work that was similar to mine, to provide a frame of reference that wasn't the usual frame of reference of the New York art world and Europe.
Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.