In the spirit of writing and sharing I wanted to share a passage from the beginning of Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, which I recently started reading to gain some background perspective on the conquest and destruction of the Americas, especially South America. It is entitled: “In Defense of the Word” and deeply resonates with me.
“One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one’s solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read . . . One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with – the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth – and the majority of them are illiterate.
... To awaken consciousness, to reveal identity – can literature claim a better function in these times? ... in these lands?”
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