Here, in the tradition of Barbara Kingsolver’s national best seller Small Wonder, are reflections on the meaning of America in a time of great crisis. Let me tell you, America, of the hopes I had for you, Dorfman writes after the fall of the Twin Towers, remembering back to an earlier September 11th in 1973, when he was on the staff of, then President of Chile, Salvador Allende the day he was removed from office and murdered in a coup in which the U.S. government was complicit. Beware the plague of victimhood, America… . Nothing is more dangerous than a giant who is afraid, Dorfman adds. In another essay he asks, Isn’t it time, as war approaches yet again, to tell each other stories of peace over and over again? Dorfman weaves together sentiment and politics with his sense of the larger historical questions, reminding Americans of our unique role in the world, so different from the one put forward by the current administration: the power to resist and to imagine.
Described by Newsweek as one of the greatest Latin American novelists, American-Chilean author Ariel Dorfman spent much of his childhood growing up in Queens, New York, and other locations in the U.S. As a Latino who writes each of his books in English and Spanish simultaneously, he offers us a bicultural, international perspective like few other American writers. Each of his books explores the relationship between reality and dreams in the many Americas. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and his plays have been staged in more than 100 countries. He writes regularly for a range of publications, including the L.A. Times, El Tiempo in Madrid, The Nation, and Granta, to name a few. Many of Dorfman’s books are available in Spanish from Seven Stories’ Spanish-language imprint, Siete Cuentos Editorial. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.
