Review: How a Guatemalan kidnapping inspired Eduardo Halfon's autofictional ‘Cancion'
-
Loading... - Maire Dunne
- 17 Oct 2022
- 73 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
“Every writer of fiction is an imposter,” Eduardo Halfon insists near the end of his new book, “Canción.” The declaration is both an admission and a challenge. Halfon — or his narrator — has come to Tokyo for a conference on Lebanese literature. The connection is tenuous at best. Yes, his paternal grandfather left Beirut in 1917, but that was three years before Lebanon was founded. It was still “part of Syrian territory.” As for what this means for Halfon’s family, it should be simple. “Legally,” he acknowledges, “they were Syrians.” But simple is not always so simple: “They called themselves Lebanese. Perhaps as their race or their people, the way it was written in the logbook. Perhaps as their identity. And so I am the grandson of a Lebanese man who was not Lebanese.”
Like so much of Halfon’s writing, the narrative of “Canción” unfolds in an elusive middle ground where heritage becomes porous. For anyone familiar with his project, this will not come as a surprise. The author is a diasporic figure: Born in Guatemala City, raised there and in Florida and educated in North Carolina, he has lived in Europe and Nebraska. His métier is family: the way we are shaped by it and the way we push back on or move beyond it; how it both supports and limits us. In “The Polish Boxer” (2012), his first book to be translated into English, this leads him to consider his other grandfather, who survived Auschwitz with the help of a fighter who came from his village. “Mourning,” his most recent book, revolves in part around his uncle Salomán, whose drowning as a child resonates in “Canción” as well. Read More...
