Background
Sánchez, known to his family and friends as Wico, was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, to a working class family on November 17, 1936.
(This world is ruled by publicitary language and by the in...)
This world is ruled by publicitary language and by the insidious ellipsis that obstruct communication and hide reality. This is a parody about those polluted languages, a novel that's a mirror of Puerto Rico and Latin America, the colonized.
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(La Importancia de Llamarse Daniel Santos/ The Importance ...)
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Sánchez, known to his family and friends as Wico, was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, to a working class family on November 17, 1936.
He completed his elementary school in Humacao, a coastal town located in the southeastern part of the island. His family relocated to San Juan when he was 12 years old, where he attended the Román Baldorioty Castro High School.
Sánchez's interest in drama can be traced to his days as a high school student. After moving to San Juan, he came in contact with Victoria Espinoza, now a professor of drama at the University of Puerto Rico, an accomplished scholar and theatrical director. As his teacher, Espinoza was one of the first to cultivate and nurture his interests in theater and drama. While still a young teenager, he founded an experimental theater group and acted in theatrical productions at the school.
Sánchez went on to study drama at the University of Puerto Rico because he wanted to become air actor. While attending the drama department at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), he won a prestigious competition to participate in a play sponsored by the National Mexican Youth Institute. His role in the play El Boticario, staged in Mexico, won him an award for best actor of the year in 1955. During his university years, Sánchez was a member of Tablado del Coqui, a the-ater company producing plays at the university, and also became a member of Comcdieta Universitaria, a theater troupe that brought drama to students in Puerto Rican schools. He also began to write during his years as a college student. He entered a theatrical competition in 1958 with his play La Espera in which he wrote for a drama class. His next play, Farsa del Amor Compradito (Farce of Purchased Love), opened in 1960 and is considered lais first serious theatrical composition. This play is now a Puerto Rican literature classic and has been staged in recent years by theatrical companies in Puerto Rico. He graduated from UPR in 1959 with a degree in drama.
After graduating, Sánchez began teaching at the University of Puerto Rico High School and also worked as an actor in the very popular soap operas broadcast on Puerto Rican radio. He obtained a master's degree in creative writing from Columbia University in 1963, and a doctoral degree in Spanish literature from the Complutence University in Madrid in 1973.
Sánchez wrote prolifically in the 1960s. Among his early plays were: O casi el alma (1964), La hiel nuestra de cada día (Our Daily Bile; 1961), and La Pasión según Antigona Pérez (Passion According to Antigone Pérez; 1968). He also published short stories such as "Sol 13, interior" and "En cuerpo de camisa". These works illustrate the early development of his literary style and also reflect his first attempts at writing works with social and political commentaries about Puerto Rico.
Sanchez's masterpiece, however, is his novel La guaracha del Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho's Beat), which was first published in 1976 and has been translated into English. The novel, which takes place in a traffic jam in Puerto Rico, is an intense and somewhat bitter commentary on Puerto Rican society. The plot revolves around the metaphorical dimensions of a fictitious song that he entitles "La vida es una cosa fenomenal" (Life is a Phenomenal Tiring).
It does not rely on a linear or structural narrative leading to the development of a plot. Instead, the author uses a technique that presents a series of snapshots depicting a wide cast of characters and their behaviors. He illustrates the mindsets of Puerto Rican struggling with their chaotic lives. In the novel he uses what he has termed "la poética de lo soez" (the poetics of the uncultured), and "hablar en puertorriqueño" (speaking in Puerto Rican) to illustrate the complex social processes that transformed and characterized Puerto Rico during the past century. His writing style is characterized by his use of everyday Puerto Rican speech often relying on common or dirty expressions to elicit a reaction from the reader. In addition, it incorporates the blending of Spanish and English among Puerto Rican speakers.
"La guagua aérea" is one of Sánchez most popular and provocative short stories. As a gifted writer, Sánchez has been uniquely able to cap-ture the experience of Puerto Rican migration to the United States. Anyone who has traveled between Luis Muñoz Marín International airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York is often likely to be amazed by the variety of peoples, behaviors, and experiences commonly witnessed during the flight. Picture a son carrying a huge cake for his mother living in Puerto Rico, which cannot be accommodated in any of the bulkhead compartments of the plane. Imagine a father bringing a live rooster to a relative who lives in New York, a rooster that eventually decides to start singing during the flight. Many passengers taking this journey often witness amazing human episodes that are hard to explain without knowing the sociological basis of the process of migration between the Puerto Rico and the United States, if you have taken that flight and read this story, you quickly realize the reasons why Sánchez has become one of the most important literary forces in the island of Puerto Rico and in Latin America. Among his important themes are the cultural inconsistencies of modern-day Puerto Rico, the existential tragicomedy of Puerto Ricans, and the complexities of Puerto Rican emigration to the United States. His writing conveys the fragmentation of Puerto Rican identity as a result of its colonial relationship with the United States.
Sánchez often combines texts from Puerto Rican media and popular culture within his works. In fact, his use of the media suggests not only a criticism of mass media as a system that he sees as turning out an inferior cultural product, but it also underscores the ways in which radio, television, and the recording industry have been misused by the power elite in the United States and Puerto Rico.
His novel La Importancia de Llamarse Daniel Santos (The Importance of Having the Name Daniel Santos; 1988) uses the character of Daniel Santos, a popular Puerto Rican singer during the 1940s and 1950s, to comment on the relationship between Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans and on their popular culture. Sánchez implies that Latin American and Puerto Ricans channel and express their personal and collective chaos and frustrations into identification with popular culture and singers.
His latest book, No llores por nosotros Puerto Rico (Don't Cry for Us Puerto Rico) was published in 1997. Here he presents 17 essays dealing with a broad array of subjects and issues ranging from contemporary problems of Puerto Rican writers, his motivation for writing, Puerto Rican politics, and issues of race and prejudice on the island.
Sánchez currently has a joint teaching appointment at the University of Puerto Rico and at New York University. Many of his literary works are now mandatory reading for Puerto Rican students who wish to learn about the island's social and political problems. He has taught at many other prestigious universities in the United States and in Europe and has been awarded many prizes for his works. In 1992, Guakia, the Puerto Rican Culture and Arts Organization in Hartford, Con-necticut, named their children's theater after him.
(La Importancia de Llamarse Daniel Santos/ The Importance ...)
(This world is ruled by publicitary language and by the in...)
(Buy La guagua aerea/ The Airbus (Spanish Edition) on Amaz...)
(Book by Sanchez, Luis Rafael)