It has now been 30 years since Ángel Rama first published his classic Transculturación narrativa en América Latina. In the interim, the Uruguayan critic’s extension of Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz’s concept of transculturation into the literary sphere has become seminal in Latin American cultural studies and cultural history. Even college freshman encountering Latin American history for the first time will receive an introduction to the concept in every new edition of John Chasteen’s Born in Blood and Fire (2001), where it serves as a central metaphor. Despite the reach of this analysis, Rama’s original collection of essays had not been translated into English. On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Duke University Press corrected this oversight by including David Frye’s eminently readable translation of the collection in its Latin America Otherwise series.
Frye’s introduction provides a brief biographical overview of Rama’s career. For those unfamiliar with Rama, Frye traces...
