MexConnect contributor Anthony Wright has published his first novel with the Vancouver, Canada-based independent publishing house Moon Willow Press. The novel, called Infernal Drums is set in Mexico and is a heady mix of road tale, occult drama, and dark comedy. Anthony, an Australian, spent a number of years in Mexico City during the 1990s, […]
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By its very nature, a film in which a house narrates the story and the story spans three separate historical periods over 300 years — a century apart — must be lauded, firstly, for its narrative ambition. Las Paredes Hablan, a new Mexican production, is that film. Its director, Antonio Zavala Kugler, acknowledges that the movie takes […]
Continue ReadingPlaza Garibaldi, 2 a.m., and the mean streets are bopping. Beers flowing. Flowing friends. Tequilas, too. Maybe a few too many. What the hell. You’ll get a taxi … You are a writer and this is a first-person narrative. Maybe you’ll be able to sell the piece. Because you were shot after you boarded that […]
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New Yorker Janelle Lynch, at a relatively young age, has garnered international recognition over the last decade for her large-format photographs of urban and rural landscapes in which the human form is loath to figure. Landscapes devoid of human activity or, if depicted at all, reminiscent of a corrosive delineation, typify Lynch’s oeuvre — and […]
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Mexican-American author Daniel Hernandez has hit a fresh nail on an old head by exploring different youth cultures in Mexico City. Youth is a favored subject for a modern mass media obsessed with this demographic, and one would think the market was pretty well saturated by this point. Moving rapidly from an emerging subculture in […]
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Aficionados of folk art of the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico are already familiar with Arden Aibel Rothstein and Anya Leah Rothstein’s Mexican Folk Art From Oaxacan Artist Families. It was surprising to learn, however, that some people with an interest in the crafts of Oaxaca’s central valleys, are not even aware of this seminal work […]
Continue ReadingImmersed in the history of art and literature, weaved into the superstitions of the collective consciousness, and illumined by the silver screens of cinema, the Wild Man paradoxically basks in the light of celebrity while haunting a preserve of shadows. The “wild man” (and woman) has appeared in numerous forms throughout the centuries of art, […]
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In the novel “Virtual Light,” cyberpunk author William Gibson envisages a Mexico City of the near future where the air is a sooted ebon and the populace wears oxygen masks. It might seem far-fetched, but with the city’s population topping 20 million, and the city’s cars about a third that number and all of it […]
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The wave of media excitement generated in 2009 by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño was on a par with the announcement of a new Britney Spears release, even if up until that moment little was really known about him. Bolaño, who succumbed to liver failure in 2003 at the age of 50 while residing in […]
Continue ReadingJulia Taylor’s ebook, The Trick is Living Here, is an informative reference on getting settled in Mexico as well as a delight to read. It isn’t everyday that you find a good source of solid, factual information coupled with a wry sense of humor. She has an eye for the surreal, and deftly weaves this talent into […]
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