Description
Book SynopsisFirst revised edition of interviews with 14 prominent activists whose writings influenced the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution and help us understand present-day Nicaragua
Margaret Randall presents a dynamic collection of personal interviews with Nicaragua's most important writer-revolutionaries who played major roles in the 1979 revolution and the subsequent reconstruction. This revised first edition includes a new preface and additional notes that frame the narrative in high relevance to the present day. The featured writer-activists speak of their work and practical tasks in constructing a new society. Among the writers included are Gioconda Belli, Tomás Borge, Omar Cabezas, Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Menéses, Julio Valle-Castillo, and Daisy Zamora. The work also features 50 evocative photographs from the era by Margaret Randall.
Trade ReviewThis is a book that encourages and empowers those of us who are poets, those of us who write – and those of us who work to change society to fit the hopes and dreams of the common people. -- Alice Walker
This new collection of fourteen interviews with Nicaraguan writers is a fascinating testament to basic human possibilities despite the harshly political determinations we have forced upon them. Once again it is Margaret Randall’s unique power as a listener that can make a bridge to this complex place we must finally recognize as our common world. -- Robert Creeley
The wonder of some of these interviews – I’m thinking of Giocanda Belli and Vidaluz Meneses particularly – the truthfulness as they tell their lives as women and literary workers in a revolutionary time … the happiness, the toll, the sacrifice that’s part of the process. And most interesting to an American woman and writer – the pride of being heard, your next poem waited for – your trade “poet” respected and emulated by the young. -- Grace Paley
‘We’re all poor and we’re all poets here,’ said one of the leaders of the Revolution that’s making a nation out of a colony. In Nicaragua, a country under constant attack, a country searching for itself, there isn’t a word worthy of being spoken or written if it hasn’t first been celebrated and suffered. These interviews by Margaret Randall bear witness to that literature standing on its own two feet.” -- Eduardo Galeano
