Montt Strabucchi, María. Representations of China in Latin American Literature (1987-2016)

Representations of China in Latin American Literature (1987Literature ( -2016) ) provides an interesting and refreshing look at the ways in which China, Chinese people, and Chinese culture have been depicted over a corpus of ten novels written by authors from Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay.María Montt Strabucchi develops her analysis over three thematic chapters focusing on: 1) novels set in China; 2) Chinese presence through Chinatowns in Latin American capitals; and 3) novels depicting travels to China.In her introduction, the author asserts that her book "focuses on how and why Latin American writers have represented 'China' in their texts" (9).This is a much welcome approach to Sino-Latin American relations as most of the past and current literature has dealt with these from economic, political, and historical perspectives.Granting the arts, especially through the literary text, a starring role when establishing further ties between Latin America and China is certainly a great contribution to the field of Latin American literary studies, and also to Global Studies as an emerging field that incorporates the arts and the humanities.Chapter 1 studies novels set in imagined 'Chinas' in texts by Argentine novelists César Aira (b.1949) and Alberto Laiseca (1941-2016), together with Mexican author Mario Bellatin (b.1960).The core strength of this chapter lies on the fact that, to Montt Strabucchi, "the novels can thus be seen to engage with a Latin American public whose idea of China is influenced by Orientalism and Cold War discourses on China as despotic and distant, while simultaneously interrupting these discourses and prior representations of that country" (45).Such ambitious intent required a contextualized reading of the corpus selected.The 'otherness' offered by China, the Chinese and Chineseness unravels known oppositions between 'East' and 'West', which would also find a parallel in Latin America as the exotic, to a certain extent.By the end of the chapter readers are told that the novels studied act "as a 'space of encounter', allowing dialogue and finding through these discursively reinvented and destabilized 'Chinas', different ways to talk about contemporary power relations and forms of strangerness (90, my italics).