ABSTRACT
Our understanding of teaching and writing about Latin American literature often focuses on works primarily written south of the US border. Yet, so many Latina/o/x writers write about topics and thematic elements that engage in transnational conversations about women, politics, and identity across one or many geopolitical borders. This chapter focuses on the novel In Search of Bernabé/En busca de Bernabé by Graciela Limón and translated by Miguel Ángel Aparicio, a text that shows the complexity of translating a novel that integrates multiple discourses such as letters, factual newspaper entries, and ghost-like voices to fill in the gaps of official history, and also illustrates a mastery of cross-cultural understanding of Latina/o/x lives. Indeed, the translator must engage in the act of translating the novel and all of its cultural, class, gender, and racial differences, and histories of underrepresented groups found in the original writing. The work of the translator, like that of the novel, helps us to see authorship of a translated piece as an act of collective writing and as one that, as in the case of the novel, blurs the lines of history and fiction.
