Cloudburst: An Anthology of Hispanic Canadian Short Stories
Editors:  Luis Molina Lora, Julio Torres-Recinos
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Ottawa, 2013

Review by Martin Boyd

In 2008, the publication of the anthology edited by Luis Molina Lora and Julio Torres-Recinos, Retrato de una nube. Primera antología del cuento hispano canadiense [“Portrait of a Cloud: First Anthology of Hispanic Canadian Short Fiction”] marked a milestone in Hispanic Canadian literature: the first anthology exclusively dedicated to short stories written by Hispanic Canadian authors. Five years later, the appearance of the translation of the same anthology into English, under the title Cloudburst: An Anthology of Hispanic Canadian Short Stories, published by University of Ottawa Press, marks another milestone: the first anthology of Hispanic Canadian short stories translated into English, making the richness and diversity of Hispanic Canadian short fiction available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

The anthology reflects both long trajectory and the current diversity of Hispanic Canadian literature, a literary tradition that began with the arrival in Canada of writers exiled from the Southern Cone during the tumultuous decade of the 1970s. Notable among these authors is Jorge Etcheverry, a Chilean writer now based in Ottawa who founded the publishing house Editorial Cordillera, one of the first publishers in Canada dedicated to the publication of literary works in Spanish. Etcheverry appears in this anthology together with several of his contemporaries, such as Nela Río and Carmen Rodríguez, from Argentina and Chile respectively, whose efforts to promote literature in Spanish in this country made them key figures in the first generation of Hispanic-Canadian writers.

Also appearing here are many members of a new generation of writers, such as the Mexicans Martha Bátiz and Felipe Quetzalcóatl Quintanalla, whose contributions to the growing canon of Hispanic Canadian literature have greatly expanded the diversity of its styles and themes.

That diversity is made evident in this anthology, which includes stories drawing from traditions ranging from political protest to comic fiction, including experimental styles that use colloquial language and even “Spanglish” to reflect the Hispanic-Canadian reality. The anthology also offers a wide diversity of themes, from intimate pictures of family life to reflections on the scars left by the political conflicts in their countries of origin. Many stories also touch on the nostalgia felt for the country left behind and the difficulties faced by immigrants to adapt to their adopted home. If there is a common feature of all the works featured here, it is the quality of the writing, which reflects the painstaking work of the editors Luis Molina Lora and Julio Torres-Recinos in their selection of the best of Hispanic-Canadian literature.

The anthology compiles 42 stories written by 22 authors from nine different countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Spain— translated by seven translators in a project sponsored by the School of Translation at the University of Ottawa. As such, it represents the largest Spanish-English translation project in the history of Canadian literature, and the result is a volume that will surely serve to bring Hispanic-Canadian writing to a broader public. It is to be hoped that more projects of this type will follow, so that the ever greater richness and diversity of Hispanic-Canadian fiction can receive due recognition as an increasingly important part of Canadian literature.