Venezuelan literature, especially narrative, is experiencing one of the most interesting and fruitful moments of recent years. I think it was in 2000 that we began to talk about a Venezuelan narrative boom and with it, the names of a select group of writers jumped into the public arena. It should be noted that the last 20th century was characterized by very interesting projects, groups, magazines, unforgettable and talented writers who created and reinforced the foundations of our literature, but in this century we see how some individualities, from inside or outside the country, have been noted with interesting and attractive proposals that have not only hooked the Venezuelan public, but also the foreigner.

We have seen with special pleasure and pride how some contemporary Venezuelan writers have managed to position themselves among the best known current writers, such is the case of Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, who this year won the famous Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Biennial, with "The Night", a novel that talks about the situation in Venezuela as a result of the electrical blackouts of 2010. Like Blanco Calderón, to whom we will dedicate a post later, many are the other young writers who have achieved important literary awards and their works have been translated into other languages and studied in some countries of the world.

Rodrigo Blanco Calderón

Perhaps one of the reasons why our literature has gained strength and has had publicity is because of the subject matter it is addressing and that it left behind some very local fictional artifices that could have restricted the readers of a work. Venezuela's current problem is a subject that appears in almost all the literary works of our writers. But there are also other more universal themes, such as sexuality, violence, exile, corruption, xenophobia, which I would like to talk about today.

One of our most recognized writers today is Miguel Gomes, a storyteller born in Caracas in 1964 who currently resides in the United States and is a graduate professor of comparative and Hispanic American literature at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. This writer has published countless books such as: Visión memorable (Memorable Vision), De fantasmas y destierros (Of Ghosts and Exiles), Un fantasma portugués (A Potuguese Ghost), Viviana y otras historias del cuerpo(Viviana and other stories of the body), El hijo y la zorra (The Son and the Fox,) Julieta en su castillo (Juliet in her castle) and Retrato de un caballero (Portrait of a gentleman).

Miguel Gomes

The book El hijo y la zorra (The Son and the Fox) is a selection of seven stories where the author walks with masterful skill through themes such as resentment, loneliness, silence, splashing his stories with realism, sarcasm, cruel humor, farce. In this post I would like to comment on the story that gives this book its name. El hijo y la zorra is a story that tells the story of Mrs. Priscilla Alden, who watches with grave concern how her son Johnny becomes friends with his new neighbors, Peruvians, who come to his neighborhood to change his life and his precepts.

In the story we see how Priscilla Alden rejects her new neighbors because they are foreigners, Latin Americans:

It is good to remember Mrs. Alden's tantrums when she was thinking of the new neighbors. It had never occurred to her that Peruvians would come to live on her street. No more and no less. She had even had to repeat the word a couple of times to be sure of what it meant: colored people screaming in an incomprehensible language.

And she worries that her son Johnny will socialize with them:

The worst thing is that Johnny was making good friends with those next door. On two or three occasions he had had to call him with any excuse, about to lose his composure, when he found him skateboarding with Juanito Cuellar.

On more than one occasion, he tries to keep Johnny away from his neighbors:

Those foreigners, surely illegal. He was going to call the Migra. Johnny reassured her: Juanito was decent and was helping him with math and Spanish - or would you rather pay a tutor again?

Source

But for those twists and turns in life and more in literary stories, at a time when Juanito and Johnny are peeing in the garden, a fox arrives and Johnny's sexual organ is torn off. Immediately, Johnny is helped by the Cuellar family that takes him to the hospital. There Priscila works as a nurse, who on seeing such a dantesque image, almost died of anguish and pain. The doctor is emphatic with the woman:

The operation is not complicated if the limb is still in good condition. If we are not lucky in that sense, there are still options; Broschi can advise us. They will be slower and more expensive, but with patience and good treatment, your child will be able to lead a more or less normal life.

The Cuellars searched everywhere and managed to find the detached limb and took it to the hospital. Johnny is successfully operated on and Priscilla feels he needs to change his mentality and attitude towards his foreign neighbors.

Source

Beyond the obvious analogy that exists between the title of the story and the story of the mother and her son, this story skips the theme of xenophobia. In this moment in which the world, especially some countries, is closing the doors to foreigners, when they persecute them, point at them and mistreat them, leaving them wandering and outdoors, this story comes to create awareness. It is curious that until recently, only a few countries discriminated against foreigners, but today xenophobia is an evil that has come to take root.

Source

At this time, Venezuelan writers are aware of an unquestionable change in the way they have related to local and foreign readers. While it is true that the exposition of our imaginary remains the main task of our narrators, the manifestation or description of other worlds, themes or concerns seem to be also a motive in our lyrics and our writers have ceased to be less local and more universal.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Gomes_(writer)
https://www.revistavenezolana.com/2019/05/escritor-venezolano-miguel-gomes-en-el-instituto-cervantes-de-madrid/
https://queleerlibros.com/pec-events/miguel-gomes/
https://letralia.com/lecturas/2018/05/30/miguel-gomes-retrato-de-un-caballero-apuntes-para-una-resena/
file:///C:/Users/Adan/Downloads/3760-8360-1-SM%20(1).pdf
https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/05/31/actualidad/1559270240_244388.html

Written by: @nancybriti

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