Between Two Silences (Entre Dos Silencios), 1987
Hilma Contreras, translated by Judith Kerman.
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Hilma Contreras was a Dominican writer. Born in 1913, she was educated in Paris, then returned to the Dominican Republic in 1933. She passed away in 2006. I found her stories surreal and biting. There is a perverse yearning to inhabit her worlds, because although they are full of injustice and death, they are also aesthetically triumphant. My favourite was “The Fire”.

The Dominican Republic Reader, 2014
Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, Raymundo González (editors)
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Name-dropping doesn’t help you learn unfamiliar topics, but because this was the only written source of Dominican “knowledge” I consumed, I don’t think it’s my place to make any elaborate comments. Therefore, a list of pertinent people I discovered throughout the reader: the Taínos (Indigenous people); Cristóbal Colón (Columbus); Brother Antonio Montesino (pleaded for church to stop torture of Indigenous people); Simón Bolívar (the Liberator); Pedro Santana, Buenaventura Báez, General Gregorio Luperón, Lili Heureaux (caudillos), Salomé Ureña (poet, founder of women’s higher education in the DR); Rafael Trujillo (Dictator); Mirabal sisters (Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa murdered – Dédé passed away 2014); Joaquín Balaguer (Dictator II); Juan Bosch (“Ni Mató, Ni Robó); José Fransisco Peña Gómez (Santo Domingo mayor); Eduardo Brito (first superstar of the DR); Johnny Ventura (merengue king, politician); Juan Luis Guerra (bachata king). Fantastic read.

L’été 80, 1980
Marguerite Duras
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Marguerite Duras avait soixante-six ans quand elle écrivait cette chronique. Ceci m’a surpris! C’était l’année où Yann Lemée (conséquemment donné le nom Yann Andréa) est devenu son compagnon, trente-huit ans son cadet et homosexuel. Selon Wikipédia, c’était une relation “passionnée et tourmentée”. Cette chronique, c’est la côte de France pendant l’été – alors l’océan – les affaires du monde (l’Iran, les Olympiques au Moscou, etc.), la monitrice qui chant “à la claire fontaine” à l’enfant, un garçon. Mais surtout, c’est l’océan, et le pouvoir de l’eau. Faudrait que je la relise pour mieux comprendre tout.