Risking a Somersault in the Air: Conversations with Nicaraguan Writers (Revised edition)

by Margaret Randall

Overview

First revised edition of interviews with 14 prominent activists whose writings influenced the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution and help us understand present-day Nicaragua

Margaret Randall presents a dynamic collection of personal interviews with Nicaragua's most important writer-revolutionaries who played major roles in the 1979 revolution and the subsequent reconstruction. This revised first edition includes a new preface and additional notes that frame the narrative in high relevance to the present day. The featured writer-activists speak of their work and practical tasks in constructing a new society. Among the writers included are Gioconda Belli, Tomás Borge, Omar Cabezas, Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Menéses, Julio Valle-Castillo, and Daisy Zamora. The work also features 50 evocative photographs from the era by Margaret Randall.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613321836
Publisher:	New Village Press
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction to the Revised Edition 1

Original Introduction 9

Chapter 1 Sergio Ramírez 33

Chapter 2 Vidaluz Meneses 55

Chapter 3 Lizandro Chávez Alfaro 71

Chapter 4 Carlos Guadamuz 83

Chapter 5 Beltrán Morales 97

Chapter 6 Ernesto Cardenal 107

Chapter 7 Michele Najlis 129

Chapter 8 Omar Cabezas 141

Chapter 9 Gioconda Belli 163

Chapter 10 Daisy Zamora 179

Chapter 11 Francisco de Asis Fernández 195

Chapter 12 Milagros Palma 211

Chapter 13 Julio Valle-Castillo 221

Chapter 14 Tomás Borge 235

Notes 247

Editorial Reviews

"‘We’re all poor and we’re all poets here,’ said one of the leaders of the Revolution that’s making a nation out of a colony. In Nicaragua, a country under constant attack, a country searching for itself, there isn’t a word worthy of being spoken or written if it hasn’t first been celebrated and suffered. These interviews by Margaret Randall bear witness to that literature standing on its own two feet.”"

Eduardo Galeano

"This new collection of fourteen interviews with Nicaraguan writers is a fascinating testament to basic human possibilities despite the harshly political determinations we have forced upon them. Once again it is Margaret Randall’s unique power as a listener that can make a bridge to this complex place we must finally recognize as our common world."

Robert Creeley

"This is a book that encourages and empowers those of us who are poets, those of us who write – and those of us who work to change society to fit the hopes and dreams of the common people."

Alice Walker

"The wonder of some of these interviews – I’m thinking of Giocanda Belli and Vidaluz Meneses particularly – the truthfulness as they tell their lives as women and literary workers in a revolutionary time … the happiness, the toll, the sacrifice that’s part of the process. And most interesting to an American woman and writer – the pride of being heard, your next poem waited for – your trade “poet” respected and emulated by the young."

Grace Paley