Writing Across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America (John Hope Franklin Center Books)

In Writing across Cultures, Rama extends the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz's theory of transculturation far beyond Cuba, bringing it to bear on regional cultures across Latin America, where new cultural arrangements have been forming among indigenous, African, and European societies for the better part of five centuries. Rama applies this concept to the work of the Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist José María Arguedas, whose writing drew on both Spanish and Quechua, Peru's two major languages and, by extension, cultures. Rama considered Arguedas's novel Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers) to be the most accomplished example of narrative transculturation in Latin America. Writing across Cultures is the second of Rama's books to be translated into English.

Angel Rama, one of Latin America’s most distinguished twentieth-century men of letters, was a noted literary critic, journalist, editor, publisher, and educator. He left his native Uruguay following the military takeover and taught at the University of Venezuela and the University of Maryland. He died in 1983 in a plane crash near Madrid.