Howard Blue's

South America

Several years ago I read Rhoda Berenson's Lori: My Daughter, Wrongfully Imprisoned in Peru and years earlier I had read Jacobo Timmermann's Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. Timmerman's book is about the author's political imprisonment and torture by the Argentine military junta. (These two titles are not yet listed below. But click on them here if you wish.) Thankfully, dictatorship's stock has fallen in South America. But the various books about South America's hard political times make for some interesting, though often sad reading.

Argentina

Barnstone, Willis. With Borges On an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir. University of Illinois Press, 1999. An American professor?s conversations with the famous writer and story teller.

Crouch, Gregory. Enduring Patagonia. Random House, 2001. On risk taking and endurance while climbing mountains in Patagonia.

Drago, Margarita. Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975-1980). Editorial Campana, 2007. How author and other women bonded together and began an underground newspaper while trying to survive prison.

Gorin, Natalie. water Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir. Amadeus Press, 2003. A journalist remembers her long-time friend Piazzolla, the famous composer of tangos.

Levine, Laurence W. Inside Argentina from Peron to Menem: 1950-2000 from an American Point of View. Edwin House Pub., 2001. By an international corporate lawyer who represented Argentinian companies.

Mauseth, James D., Kiesling, Roberto, and Ostolaza, Carlos. Cactus Odyssey: Journeys in Wilds of Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina. Timber Press, 2002. Three scientists studying cacti.

Winter, Brian. Long after Midnight at the Nino Bien: A Yanqui's Missteps in Argentina. PublicAffairs, 2007. Travel memoir by a recent college grad learning the tango while living in Buenos Aires.

Bolivia

Eidse, Faith and Sichel, Nina. Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global. Intercultural Press, 2004.

Estrada, Ulises. Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia. Ocean Press, 2005. By the organizer of Guevara's guerrilla mission to Bolivia who trained Tania as an undercover agent.

Ghinsberg, Yossi. Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival. Boomerang New Media, 2005. Survival memoir of a backpacker.

Spitzer, Leo. Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism. Hill and Wang, 1998. By the son of German Jewish refugees in Bolivia.

Brazil

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir. PublicAffairs, 2007. After going abroad to step away from his family's involvement in politics, author returned to Brazil and eventually became president.

De Carvalho, Sarah. The Street Children of Brazil: One Woman's Remarkable Story. Hodder & Stoughton, 1996. Brit leaves her TV production job to help street children in Brazil.

Lukasse, Jeannette. A Cry from the Streets: Rescuing Brazil's Forgotten Children. YWAM Pub., 2002.

Chile

Agosin, Marjorie. A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile. Univ. of New Mexico Press., 1995.

Allende, Isabel. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile. HarperCollins, 2003.

Allende, Isabel. The Sum of Our Days . HarperCollins, 2008. The famed novelist on how she dealt with the death of her daughter.

Cooper, Marc. Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir . Verso, 2001. The former translator for President Salvatore Allende whom Pinochet overthrew via a military coup.

Davis, Charles G. Around Cape Horn: A Maritime Artist/Historian's Account of His 1892 Voyage . Down East Books, 2004.

Lastarria, Jose Victorino. Literary Memoirs . Oxford University Press, 2000. Experiences during the campaign for Chile's independence from Spain.

Munoz, Heraldo. The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet . Basic Books, 2008. By a former official in the Allende government overthrown by Pinochet in 1973.

Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. By the Nobel prize-winning writer and former communist politician.

Register, Margaret A. No Place for Plastic Saints: Earthquakes, Chicken Feet and Candid Confessions of a Missionary Wife . Xulon Press, 2009. By wife of a missionary who worked in Chile and Paraguay.

Rosales, Vincente Perez. Times Gone By: Memoirs of a Man of Action . Oxford University Press, 2003. Author's life as sailor, cattle smuggler, miner, advisor to Argentine warlord, and Chilean consul in Hamburg, among other occupations, in the early 1800s.

Wheeler, Sara. Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey through Chile. Modern Library, 1999.

Columbia

Betancourt, Ingrid. Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia . Ecco, 2002. By the Columbian-French politician and anti-corruption activist who was kidnapped after book's publication by right wing forces.

Ecuador

Burke, Nancy Conley. Call of My Heart: The Journey to Ecuador and Beyond . Helm Pub., 2006. A woman's journey into the mystical world of shamanism.

Guyana

Brailey, Jeffrey. The Ghosts of November: Memoirs of an Outsider Who Witnessed the Carnage at Jonestown, Guyana . Jj Pub., 1998.

De Mohid, Batoon Barali Bacchus and Baker, Georgette. Batoon Barali Bacchus Mohid: Grandma's Memoirs . Cantemos, 2009. Growing up as a Guyanese Indian woman.

Roth, Vincent and Bennett, Michael. Vincent Roth, A Life in Guyana, Volume 2: The Later Years . Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2002.

Roth, Vincent and Bennett, Michael. Vincent Roth, A Life in Guyana, Volume 1: A Young Man's Journey . Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2002.

Young, Matthew French. Guyana: The Lost El Dorado: My Fifty Years in the Guyanese Wilds . Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 1998.

Peru

Bingham, Hiram. Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru . Houghton Mifflin, 1923.

Fraser, Russell. From China to Peru: A Memoir of Travel . University of South Carolina Press, 2009.

Llosa, Mario Vargas. A Fish in the Water: A Memoir . Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. Peruvian writer on his run for the presidency.

Marshall, Connie. Faces of Love, Death and Transformation: A Spiritual Memoir . Mayfair, 2008. On author's trip to Peru to study with shamans.

Miller, John. Memoirs of General Miller V2: In the Service of the Republic of Peru . Kessinger Publishing LLC, 2007.

Wade, Lisa. Finding Far Away . Eloquent Books, 2009. By a young woman working as an Environmental engineer for a gold mining operation in Peru.

Uruguay

Rosencof, Mauricio. The Letters That Never Came . University of New Mexico Press, 2004. By a Uruguayan activist during the country's rule by a dictatorship.

Venezuela Belle-Villada, Gene H. Overseas American: Growing Up Gringo in the Tropics . University of Mississippi Press, 2005. An American's childhood in Puerto Rico,

Venezuela

De La Parra, Teressa. Mama Blanca's Memoirs . University of Pittsburg Press, 1993. On growing up in a Venezuelan hacienda and the nation' s political turmoil at the time.

Hardy, Charles. Cowboy in Caracas: A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution . Curbstone Press, 2007. An American former priest who has lived in Venezuela for 20 years on the impact of Hugo

Chavez. Rafter, M. Memoirs of Gregor McGregor: Comprising a Sketch of the Revolution in New Grenada and Venezuela (1820). Kessinger Publishing LLC, 2009.

St. Aubin de Teran, Lisa. The Hacienda: A Memoir . Back Bay Books, 1999. About author's marriage at 17 and her move from England to Venezuela and then back again after marital problems.

Howard Blue's

South America

Bolivia

Brazil

Google Analytics