Ulibarrí, Sabine - Allan Johnston (review date Summer 1991)
Allan Johnston (review date Summer 1991)
[Here, Johnston favorably reviews Ulibarrí's El cóndor, and Other Stories.]
Sabine Ulibarri has worked much in the realm of the folktale and the oral personal anecdote. While such works are effective, they sometimes feel unfinished; the very rough-and-hewn grace that pulls them together consigns them to a specific, limited genre. In [El Condor and Other Stories], however, Ulibarri manages, while preserving the freshness of the anecdotal, to take us to places entirely different from those explored in a book like My Grandmother Smoked Cigars. Working in the realm of cultural myth, Ulibarri introduces us to a world at once homely and exotic, familiar and fantastic.
Mixing the dominant mythology of our culture with the "myths" of cultural stereotypes, Ulibarri manages to open up both realms with gentle sarcasm. For example, in "Loripola," Ulibarri's send-up of Pygmalion, we find out that...
[The entire page is 368 words long]
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