Yesterday the English and World Languages departments hosted a literary colloquium on literature from the Latin American Boom. Students from numerous area high schools wrote and presented papers on short stories selected for the event.
The Boom was more than a literary movement. Boom writers, inspired by the poetic giants of Latin American “modernismo” and the early 20th century works of storytellers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, and Juan Rulfo, brought “lo real maravilloso” to a worldwide audience in the 1960s and 1970s. Magical realism grew in popularity at a time when the Latin American world was in unprecedented flux, as postcolonial countries wrestled with differing political ideologies, social injustice, national identities, and economic ups and downs.