Please join us for another CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday, 9 May from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

As part of doctoral research conducted at the Australian National University, this presentation proposes a comparative analysis of two works by the contemporary Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra. Focusing on close readings of the book of hybrid texts, Literatura infantile (Children’s Literature) (Anagrama, 2023), and his first book for children, Mi opinión sobre las ardillas (My Thoughts on Squirrels) (Ekaré Sur, 2022), we will discuss how Zambra’s literary discourse constructs the categories of childhood and adulthood, and explore the role of intergenerational and transnational dynamics in these works. By analysing the shift in perspective —such as the viewpoint of a recent father or the narrative of a child recounting his father’s fears—, we will address how these relationships are permeated by alterity and otherness. Additionally, the analysis will consider how Zambra employs intergenerational relationships as a fruitful space for reflecting on his own literary work, challenging conventional categories such as genre literature, children’s literature, and adult literature. This paper is part of a transnational study into imaginaries of childhood and parenthood in contemporary Latin American narratives also analysing works by Guadalupe Nettel, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Carolina Sanín, and Valeria Luiselli.

Jéssica Mariana Andrade Tolentino is a PhD student at the Australian National University, holding a master’s degree in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture from the University of Glasgow. In 2019, she coedited the book Literatura Infantil: Campo, Materialidade e Produção (Moinhos, 2019). She is cofounder of Colectivo La Lucila, an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the study of children’s media in Latin America.

Dr. Thomas Nulley-Valdés is Lecturer in Spanish Studies at the Australian National University. He is an emerging scholar of World Literature with a focus on Spanish and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries. His first monograph is McOndo Revisited (Lexington, 2023), and he is currently preparing an edited volume with Juan Poblete (UC Santa Cruz) titled Chilean Literature as World Literature.