Paradise Lost or Gained? The Literature of Hispanic Exile.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

In his epigraph to the Introduction of Paradise Lost or Gained?, Fernando Alegria describes the psychological evolution of the exile: "The first months of numbness, pain and depression passed. I realized that a new phase of exile was beginning, that from now on there would be other periods, all different, each with its own anxieties, all shattering and overwhelming, and that I would be changing too, passing from one crisis to the next until I reached the moment of truth, unique and definitive--the day on which I would either stop being an exile and return home, or unavoidably, with sadness and resignation, become an immigrant." The stories, poems and essays in this collection--some in English, some in Spanish--focus on different phases of this process. A few describe the intolerable circumstances in the native country that forced the writer to leave; others recreate the difficulties of adaptation; still others depict reencounters with the native culture in which exiles, now accustomed to new environments, suddenly realize that they have become foreigners in their own lands. Surprisingly, few of these pieces are nostalgic or angry. The best treats the dilemma of the exile with warmth and humor.

One of the funniest and most heart-rending stories in the collection is "Garage Sale People," by Juan Armando Epple, about a Chilean family living in Eugene, Oregon. Alienated and homesick, the family cultivates memories of the homeland, especially that of the loving grandmother who makes incomparable humitas and empanadas. The children cherish the hope that someday they will be able to bring Granny to Eugene to live with them, and the adults haven't the heart to tell them that she has been dead for years. One of the aspects of their new surroundings that fascinates the family members most is that very American phenomenon, the garage sale. Little by little the father, especially, is drawn into the consumer mentality that leads people to wander from sale to sale, acquiring merchandise they don't need. But when the children insist that it is time to bring Granny to Eugene from Chile and will no longer take no for an answer, the distraught father finds the solution--amazingly!--at a garage sale.

Guillermo A. Reyes, also a Chilean, captures the ironies of exile wonderfully in his hilarious story, "Patroklos," the tale of a homosexual theater director who runs a small playhouse in Los Angeles. Patroklos talks incessantly of returning home, but once he has...