New Writing from Mexico

This uneven but useful compilation, published as a special issue of TriQuarterly magazine, introduces English-speaking readers to more than 50 Mexican writers, most born after 1945: the generation most affected by the violence of 1968. This was the year that ``divided contemporary Mexico from its past,'' Gibbons ( Five Pears or Peaches ) writes. From as many different perspectives as there are contributors, these pieces respond to the question: ``What is Mexican?'' Monica Mansour writes, ``there are those lovers who appear / when there's no time for anything but hating / like that day in '68 / when a strange man put his hand / into the deepest part of me.'' The women here frequently couch nationalism in terms of love. There are missing persons, but from this Mexican perspective they are persons involved in a love triangle, not victims of governments. This is a country where, as in Jesus Gardea's story, it seems natural for men to go out searching for a valuable guitar while flies battle with the one person at home for the last pieces of food. The majority of contributors have not previously been translated. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Dec.)