Post-Boom Novels
Post-Boom Latin American Literature since the 1960s
[Latin American Boom and Post-Boom Novels are on Display at Boston College Libraries.]
The Latin American Boom was a literary movement in the 1960s and 70s. It originated when the works of predominantly male Latin American authors like Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez became wildly circulated throughout Europe, particularly in Paris and Barcelona. Influenced by Mondernism and the Vanguadia movement, the works of the Boom authors were highly experimental: time was often treated as a nonlinear object; perspectives were juxtaposed by accounts of multiple, and frequently contradicting, voices. reality was oftentimes distorted by the presence of surreal, fantastical elements. Additionally, the works of the Boom authors were deeply influenced by the tempestuous Latin American political landscape of the 1960’s, particularly by the Cuban Revolution and the proliferation of military regimes in South America.
Yo-Yo Boing!
This iconic Spanglish novel by the leading Hispanic-American poet Giannina Braschi was heralded…as “in your face assertion of the vitality of Latino culture in the United States.” It is also a very funny novel, a novel of argumentative conversations that cover food, movies, literature, art, the academy, sex, memory, and every day life. It is a book that should be performed as well as read.
Boston College Libraries: Boom and Post-Boom Novels
The Post-Boom started in the 1980’s. It was different from the Boom in many aspects, most notably in that the Post-Boom had a strong presence of female authors. post-Boom authors such as Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolaño, Cristina Peri Rossi, Elena Poniatowska, Severo Sarduy, Manuel Puig, Luisa Valenzuela, and Giannina Braschi, rejected the Boom’s experimental approach. Instead, they embraced a simpler, more approachable narrative.
Boston College Libraries features these Boom and Post-Boom Novels on display:
CLICK TO READ MORE ON THESE POST BOOM NOVELS.
- Cobra, Severo Sarduy (Sarduy, 1972)
- 2666, Roberto Bolaño (Bolaño, 2004)
- Mr. President, Miguel Ángel Asturias (Asturias, 1946)
- Conversation in the Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa (Vargas Llosa, 1969)
- Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig (Puig, 1976)
- Strange Things Happen Here, Luisa Valenzuela (Valenzuela, 1975)
- Blow-Up and Other Stories, Julio Cortázar (Cortázar, 1959)
- Angel of Darkness, Ernesto Sabato (Sabato, 1974)
- Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar (Cortázar, 1963)
- The Burning Plain, Juan Rulfo (Rulfo, 1953)
- Paradiso, José Lezama Lima (Lezama Lima, 1966)
- The Obscene Bird of Night, José Donoso (Donoso, 1970)
- The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (Allende, 1982)
- View of Dawn in the Tropics, Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cabrera Infante, 1974)
- Yo-Yo Boing!, Giannina Braschi (Braschi, 1998)
- State of Exile, Cristina Peri Rossi (Peri Rossi, 2003)
- Lilus Kikus, Elena Poniatowska (Poniatowska, 1954)
- The Shipyard, Juan Carlos Onetti (Onetti, 1961)
Research Post-Boom Novels
Bibliography on Contemporary Latin American Fiction, Poetry, and Theater
- Amar Sánchez, Ana María. “La ficción de los medios: McOndo y la generación del fin de siglo.” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 67, no. 197, 2001, pp. 691–700.
- Barradas, Efraín. “La necesaria innovación de Ana Lydia Vega: Preámbulo para lectores vírgenes.” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 51, no. 132–133, 1985, pp. 547–56.
- Brescia, Pablo. “Estados Unidos y la cuestión de la literatura (latinoamericana).” Novísimas: Las narrativas latinoamericanas y españolas del siglo XXI, edited by Eduardo Becerra, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2021, pp. 413–28.
- Carrión, María M. “Geography, (M)Other Tongues and the Role of Translation in Giannina Braschi’s El imperio de los sueños.” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, vol. 20, no. 1, 1996, pp. 167–90.
- De la Rosa, Irene Menéndez. Review of El inglés y el español en contacto en los Estados Unidos: Reflexiones acerca de los retos, dilemas y complejidad de la situación sociolingüística estadounidense, edited by Silvia Betti and Renata Enghels. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 65, 2022, pp. 211–14.
- Finnegan, Nuala. Cultural Scars: Gender and Violence in Contemporary Mexican Fiction by Women. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
- Fuguet, Alberto, and Sergio Gómez, editors. McOndo. Grijalbo, 1996.
- Gameza, Anastasia. “Desplazamientos lingüísticos y literarios en la obra de Giannina Braschi Yo-Yo Boing!.” Revista del Centro de Investigaciones Lingüístico-Literarias, 2015.
- Islam, Najnin. “Writing Precarity: Neoliberalism and the Globalized Atlantic.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 62, no. 1, 2021, pp. 130–37.
- La Torre Lagares, Elidio. Hyperglossia and the Novel: The Production of (Non) Space. Routledge, 2025.
- Levinson, Brett. The Ends of Literature: The Latin American “Boom” in the Neoliberal Marketplace. Stanford UP, 2001.
- Lowry, Elizabeth. “Rhetoric, Identification, and Symbolic Representation in Giannina Braschi’s United States of Banana.” Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, and Television, edited by Svenja Frank, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 155–74.
- Maier, Linda S. “A McOndo Writer’s Take on Literature in the Era of Audiovisual and Digital Communication: The Case of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida.” Hispania, vol. 94, no. 3, 2011, pp. 406–15.
- Marting, Diane E. “New/Nueva York in Giannina Braschi’s ‘Poetic Egg’: Fragile Identity, Postmodernism, and Globalization.” The Global South, vol. 4, no. 1, 2010, pp. 167–82.
- O’Dwyer, Tess. “Giannina Braschi.” The Literary Encyclopedia, 19 Mar. 2026.
- Randall, Margaret, John Beverley, and George Yúdice. The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America. Duke UP, 1996.
- Riofrio, John. “Rompiendo esquemas: Catastrophic Bravery in United States of Banana.” Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer, U of Pittsburgh P, 2020, pp. 32–42.
- Robles Mejías, Rojo. Cinegrafía: Literatura, espectadores y cinefilia contemporánea en Latinoamérica. Editorial Isla Negra, 2020.
- Sandoval, Alberto, and Frances Aparicio. “Hibridismos culturales: La literatura y la cultura de los latinos en los Estados Unidos.” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 71, no. 212, 2005, pp. 665–97.
- Shaw, Donald. “Towards a Description of the Post-Boom.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 66, no. 1, 1989, pp. 87–94.
- Stanchich, Maritza. “Braschi, Giannina.” The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, edited by Patrick O’Donnell et al., vol. 1, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 1–7.
- Stein, Shawn Coyle. Anatomías de la nación: Hacia una sátira posmoderna en cuatro novelas de Brasil y México (1993–2001). 2006. University of California, Riverside, PhD dissertation.
- Tompkins, Cynthia, and Ana Luiza Trevisan, editors. Latin American Women Writers and the Literature of Madness: Narratives at the Turn of the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
- Waldron, John V. “Killing Colonialism’s Ghosts in McOndo: Mayra Santos Febres and Giannina Braschi.” CIEHL: Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y de Literatura, vol. 14, 2010, pp. 110–20.
- Williams, Raymond L. The Columbia Guide to the Latin American Novel Since 1945. Columbia UP, 2007.