SOURCE: An introduction to Lives on the Line: The Testimony of Contemporary Latin American Authors, edited by Doris Meyer, University of California Press, 1988, pp. 1-11.

Meyer is an American writer and educator, and the author of several books on Latin American literature. In the following excerpt, she provides an overview of the role of the Latin American writer throughout history.

We can say without irony or lack of respect that in order to speak solely of Latin American literature today one has to create an environment similar to that of an operating room with specialists who only look at the patient lying on the stretcher and the patient can be called novel or short story or poem. In all honesty I can say that the few times I have been in those operating theaters of literary criticism I have gone out into the street with a burning desire...