Exploring Spanish Literature

 Background: Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 in Spain right outside of Madrid. He is the most historic and old writers I have researched so far. He was an early modern writer and was known to be ahead of his time. Many consider him the best writer in the history of Spanish literature. He was most famous for his novel "Don Quixote" which is known as one of the first modern novels of world literature. This novel is world known and has been translated into over 60 languages. He loved deep dives into a widespread of genres and was very experimental and passionate. His early education is mostly unknown, but he was the 4th of 7 children and moved towns often because his father was a barber surgeon. Surprisingly, he did not attend college. He went to Italy and enlisted as a solider against the Ottoman Empire for an army called the Holy League. When he returned to Spain after fighting, his ship was seized by Algerian ships and he became a slave for five years. He was released an...

 This poem is a sonnet titled "XXII Amor" by Pablo Neruda. It starts off with describing love without site, where love comes from so many places, like what you hear, then just how one may appear. Line 4 states that "You are the aroma of the cereales that I love" so the poet here is referring to a small detail of life and connecting it to an overarching idea about what love. We often see commas in the middle of lines, but on line 11, a period is separating two part of the line, which is unusual. I believe the volta appears at the beginning of the second to last line, so this period may be used to trigger the volta.  He describes love without really knowing it and describes it was this indirect thing that sometimes cannot be identified until it passes. The poet ends the poem with a metaphor. "Frente a mis ojos estabas, reinándome, y reinas. Como hoguera en los bosques el fuego es tu reino." This metaphor compares the love for this other person to a bonfire i...

 Hola! Hoy voy a escribir reflexiones solo en español. Estoy practicando y quiero ser mejor al escribir en español. Ahora, estoy viendo a una poema que se llama "Poema de Amor XXII" por Pablo Neruda. Estudio sobre la vida de Neruda y estos son algunos aspectos relevantes. Pablo Neruda fue el Senator de Chile. Él nació en el año 1904 en Parral, Chile. El fue un político y un poeta. Los dos cosas son muy diferentes, y este es muy interesante. El ganó el "Nobel Prize in Literature" en 1971. Escribió muchos sonetos, entonces era muy dificíl para elegir una para estudiar. En el proximo publicación, voy a hablar sobre los aspectos importantes sobre soneto XXII y la idea de amor.  

 This week, I will discuss some things I have been doing recently. I started a non profit this summer and connected it to a service club at my school, where I can gain members who share the same passions that I do. (For more info about my non profit, visit spanishsupportanddiscovery.org) I recently went into a Spanish class at a local elementary school and did an activity with the young students. It was such a fun experience and they also asked me all sorts of personal questions and we had many fun conversations in Spanish. I also have been uploading weekly Spanish grammar youtube tutorials, that focuses on a different concept per week. I am in the process of reaching out to principals at elementary/middle schools across San Diego to gain more clients. During our service meetings, we will also create awareness of current events in Spanish speaking countries, and it will be a time for everyone to discuss some of these major events. I also have a friend who recently became president ...

 Rosa Montero is a journalist and writer who was born on January 3rd, 1951 in Madrid, Spain. (which is really cool because I have so much history there). She is one of the most renowned female artists in all of Spain. She does journaling for television films, magazines, newspapers, etc. She has conducted more then 2,000 interviews in her lifetime, it is the biggest thing she is known for. She has interviewed well known individuals such as Richard Nixon, Malala Yousafzi, and Indira Gandhi. She has been a large influence at schools across Spain. She exploited her career by teaching a journalism and literature class at Madrid's Contemporary School of Humanities. She was also a screenwriter for a television show titled Media Naranja (my half orange, a metaphor that is like "my other half" in english) and wrote her own fictional contemporary books. She has taken so many paths at once using her passion and drive, and it has been shown through her series of awards. She won the W...

 Garza was born on October 1st, 1964. Not only does she write phenomenal literature, but she also enjoys teaching in both Mexico and the United States (she is fluent in both English and Spanish). She was born in a Mexican State near the border called Tamaulipas and her interest in writing began as a teenager. Later, she did her undergraduate studies on urban sociology but then transitioned interests and got her masters in Latin American History. Her teaching career is something I became very interested in because I myself enjoy teaching students Spanish grammar. She taught Latin American history and creative writing  at various universities. A quote from Cristina stated: " Uno necesita el mar para esto: para dejar de creer en la realidad. Para hacerse preguntas imposibles. Para no saber. Para dejar de saber. Para embriagarse de olor. Para cerrar los ojos." In case you do not speak enough Spanish to understand, here is my translation: "One needs the sea for this: to stop ...

 Cristina Rivera Garza is an extremely popular female writer who originated from Mexico. She was the recipient of the 2013 Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature as well as the 2005 Anna Seghers Award. She had also received her doctorate from the University of Houston. Garza had caught my eye not only because of her fame, but also because of her variety of style. She writes novels, short-stories, poetry, and non fiction, which have all been translated from Spanish into multiple languages. One interesting fact about her is that she is the only author to have won the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz price two times! In my next posts, I will research about her life previous to her writing career and will also read and discuss one of her pieces. 

 I found a copy of this story with both the English and Spanish version side by side. I read the Spanish version out loud to myself, and whenever I came across a word or phrase I did not know, I referred to the English version. This short story not only helped me improve my vocabulary, but it also helped me take in the information stated in the text. Once I finished the Spanish version, I read the story again in English to test how much information I obtained while reading in Spanish. Marques is a very talented writer, so some words and sentences were tricky to translate between languages. It is not possible to make a word by word translation of the text. This story is about a man named Pelayo who finds an old, filthy, disoriented and homeless looking man with enormous wings in his courtyard while killing crabs. Sparked with curiosity, he immediately notifies his wise neighbor about his finding. She concludes that the man is actually an angel whose mission was to take their ill chi...

  One writer who caught my eye was Gabriel Garcia Marques from Columbia. He was a journalist and short-story writer who soon became one of the most famous writers in Latin-America. He was born in 1927 and unfortunately died in 2014. Marques originally planned to study law at Jesuit college, but was sent to Rome in 1954 for an assignment regarding his journaling career. In 1982, Marques won the Nobel prize in Literature mainly because of his use of magical realism in the story “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” (I will discuss this in a post later on). I find it fascinating that he began as a journalist, and then explored other topics (like short-stories, long novels, etc) within his interest. He made novels and short-stories that attracted all ages as well, including children.  His books are translated into many languages, which made me wonder how the themes and messages in his books change. I am a native English speaker, and am studying Spanish in school and at home. In my next...