Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile. 10.50.

The sun has returned. It feels like quite a long time since I last saw it. It has been so cloudy with the constant threat of rain here in Santiago that I haven’t really seen the sun since the day I arrived, now some three weeks ago – with the exception of that glorious afternoon down in Patagonia when the snowclouds cleared. I have missed it: Chile looks so very different in the sunlight. The lingering snow in the high mountains is a special shade of blue, though it looks about as soft and cold as marble. The students spent their breaktime playing one of their quarterfinal intercolour football games, with a mixed team of boys and girls. A meadowlark is singing somewhere above the classroom block, and every time I turn around, I can see a harris hawk or two gliding high up in the wintry blue sky. This is a very special place.

One of the most reassuring things about this Chilean exchange is the renewed confidence I have regarding my text choices for the Spanish Language A course I’m rolling out. After a chat with the English department yesterday, it turns out they are studying some of the texts that I planned on exploring with my students next year – so there is a precedent! As it stands, my reading list looks something like this:

1. Rebelion en la granja (George Orwell, UK)
2. Maus (US)
3. Pedro Paramo (Juan Rulfo, MX)
4. El tunel (Ernesto Sabato, AR)
5. Romancero gitano (Federico Garcia Lorca, ES)
6. El reino de este mundo (Alejandro Carpentier, CU)
7. El burlador de Sevilla (Tirso de Molina, ES)
8. La casa de los espiritus (Isabel Allende, CL)
9. Cien años de soledad (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, CO)
10. El maestro y Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov, RU)
11. Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (Pablo Neruda, CL)
12. Otelo (Shakespeare, UK)
13. El extranjero (Albert Camus, FR)

To be honest, I’m surprised at myself with this list – primarily because of the tremendously heavy Latin American focus. Years ago, in my university days, I steered my Hispanic Studies degree firmly away from Latin American texts, focusing instead on all things Iberian: Castilian medieval epics, postmodern Spanish literature, and the Quijote module that never was. However, the parameters of the IB are clear: the texts studied should cover a broad range of geographic regions and time periods, so that students can discuss the similarities and differences between the overarching themes, and in so doing, ask insightful questions that push them closer to being truly global citizens. That, at least, is the idea.

It’s a big ask. My usual stomping ground is medieval epics like El Cantar del mio Cid (which, funnily enough, is one of the set texts for the Spanish Language and Literature course out here), but I really want my students to get to grips with the wider Hispanic world – just as I am getting to grips with it myself, after stubbornly ignoring the Hispanic World beyond the Atlantic for far too long.

I´ve tried to cover as many countries as I can while threading together a coherent corpus that lends itself well to comparative work, revolving around five primary themes: power, identity, memory, morality and the supernatural. It’s a tall order for my students, I know, and I hope they are up to the task. Hell, I hope I am up to the task! But I am seriously looking forward to being a full-on teacher of literature at last, even if I have had to come by the road of Spanish Literature in order to do so.

With that being said, I had better crack on and get some of these presentations whipped up. This curriculum won’t write itself! BB x