Iván Molina Jiménez has collected autobiographical essays from three major contemporary Costa Rican writers of the “generaciòn del desencanto” in a moving volume that unfolds slowly, adhering to the writerly admonition to “show, not tell.” The book comprises an informative prologue; essays by Anacristina Rossi, José Ricardo Chaves, and Uriel Quesada; an epilogue; and four valuable appendices. For example, the first appendix lists more than 60 notable Costa Rican authors who lived abroad, along with basic information about their migration. The remaining three appendices are comprehensive bibliographies of works by and about the featured writers. This book is the eighteenth volume in the series Historia Cultural de Costa Rica, which includes accessible texts on a wide range of exciting subjects.
In the prologue, Molina Jiménez lays out a foundational debate over Costa Rican national culture. The debate dates to an 1894 polemic wherein Carlos Gagini Chavarría excoriated Costa Rican writers for taking up foreign themes and snubbing their homeland. Ricardo Fernández Guardia, whose work was the immediate target of critique, countered that writers were not obliged to study their origins but should follow artistic greatness wherever it may lead. Molina Jiménez adds dimension to this debate by informing readers that the majority of bookshop owners in Costa Rica at the turn of the century preferred to order foreign titles. Thus, at stake in the debate was not just a national canon, but the structural challenge facing Costa Rican writers. The marginalization of Costa Rican literature dates to its inception.
Ultimately, this book contributes to this centenarian problematic by asking to what degree Costa Rican literature can be viewed as strictly nationalist, given the common experience of migration among its authors. Of course, this question is not unique to Costa Rica. Like other disenchanted generations of Latin American writers, Costa Ricans responded to the apparent failures of modernity by experimenting with style, voice, and form. Personal experiences of migration further complicated matters. The national and transnational sat in uneasy association.
The autobiographical essays are delightful. Rossi recounts her time in London and Paris, around Crete, to Berkeley, and back to Costa Rica with verve and good humor. Chaves invites the reader to look out the window of his study, the opening of a love letter to Mexico City and San José, but most of all to his younger self and the tender process of coming to know one's queerness through literary theory. Finally, Quesada's essay in the third person exemplifies the dislocations of a peripatetic life, the writer noting his fears and triumphs at some distance for the reader. All three writers wrestle with the double-bind of identity: how one sees one's self and how one is seen by others.
Scholars outside the field of Costa Rican history and literature will find in these case studies stimuli for further reflection and analysis. On some of the most interesting analytical points— such as how age, gender, class, political view, and country of residence shaped the experience of migration, or even an overview of Costa Rican migration—the brief prologue and epilogue touch only in passing. The volume assumes a good deal knowledge on Costa Rican history. Likewise, readers unfamiliar with Costa Rican literature may not recognize the three writers at the center of the text. On one hand, the essays’ richness will recruit many new readers to their work; on the other, the reader wonders how the three authors were selected from the long list in Appendix 1.
More than shortcomings, these critiques point to the book's value. Central American literature remains marginalized. Yet, the volume effectively establishes Costa Rica's contributions to the transnational world of letters. Whether writing from Mexico, the United States, or Costa Rica, this volume claims Rossi, Chaves, and Quesada as Costa Rican writers. As the volume's title suggests, the notion of return is complicated.
