ROADS LESS TRAVELLED - JUNE 2026: NON-FICTION ON THE AMERICAS

It could be a travel book, it could be politics, it could be anthropology, it could be biography, a history, a focus on a particular region.

It does not have to be written by someone of the region but be about the region.

Because this is a ROADS LESS TRAVELLED challenge, book focusing entirely on the USA or on Canada do not qualify but their place in the wider context of the region does qualify.

I plan to read as a minimum

Eduardo Galeano and his book The Open Veins of Latin America

>2 PaulCranswick: I read Open Veins of Latin America a very long time ago....and while I wasn't planning to read The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival (1986) by Alicia Partnoy, I managed to read the entire book yesterday.
Partnoy's book is a series of short vignettes on her own and her friends' disappearance experiences. They spent months blindfolded and tortured in just a couple of little rooms in what was 'The Little School'. Several of her friends disappeared from this prison and their fates unknown. Her friend gave birth in captivity, the child was taken and raised by one of the prison guards and the mother became one of the disappeared. Partnoy and her husband were lucky and eventually were able to leave for the USA. A group of high schoolers were held for several days there but due to the public outcry they were released.
I've read a few books on the disappeared, they are all sad and worth reading. A few years back I watched a film about a stolen child, it might have been 'Official Story' but I'm not sure. I can only find this film and Cautiva (2003).
On one of my first trips to Buenos Aires in the late 1980s I remember seeing large numbers of The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo walking around the square, I think they still turn up every Thursday.

I have a few other books to look at - Marching Powder by Rusty Young, Latin American Heroes: Liberators and Patriots from 1500 to the Present by Jerome Adams, Genesis by Galeano etc

I have also thought of Paul Theroux's travel by train through the continent,
Bruce Chatwin's take on being In Patagonia, something by Octavio Paz, Graham Greene or Salman Rushdie. Ingrid Betancourt' captivity memoir also appeals.

>4 PaulCranswick: Paul, I was thinking that the author had to be from the area so I excluded those. I may reconsider. I like reading travel lit so Paul Theroux was one I considered.

Started Tristes Tropiques. I have no interest in anthropology but back when I bought this book Lévi-Strauss ‘s appeal transcended his discipline. He has already alluded to Freud and existentialism, hot topics once upon a time. In the next section we will get to South America.

I want to read Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert by Terry Tempest Williams which has been tagged: travel, natural history, American southwest, human ecology, deserts, essays, wilderness preservation. Been on my shelf at least 10 years!

ETA: The SW desert(s) do run into Mexico..not sure this will suffice. We shall see!

There was a group read on Club Read earlier this year of America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin. This was about the differences the author sees in the Spanish and English colonization of what became the USA and lands south (Mexico, Latin America, South America.) It's also about the United States relationship with these locations. If anyone wants to look at the discussion, the thread is here.

I'd like to try Dervla Murphy's Eight feet in the Andes: travels iwth a mule in unknown Peru, but I doubt I'll get to it this month.

Paul -

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June;
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon...

From SHERWOOD by Alfred Noyes

My plans for this month include classics that I have had on my shelves for many years and never read.

I have started Bury my heart at Wounded Knee by Dew Brown. According to >1 PaulCranswick: it does not qualify as it is all set in the USA, but I'll read it nonethe less. To be honnest, I started reading it some 30 years ago and could not pass page 100. I think I have grown as a reader and have a better grasp of US history and a higher interest on minorities to get something from this difficult read.
If time allows, I'll try to read The children of Sánchez, autobiography of a Mexican family by Oscar Lewis. But that might be too ambitious.

There are a few books mentionned here that I have on my shelves but had not thought about when making my reading plans: The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, In Patagonia by Breuce Chatwin for example. ideas for reads latter this year?

Finished Tristes Tropiques. Reinforced my distrust of anthropology as a discipline; Lévi-Strauss’ condescension towards his subjects—sometime overt, other times unconscious—was hard to take. Writing style was generally engaging, however, until last chapter which inexplicably changed course to Pakistan and an attack on Islam. Will be giving away my other unread book by CL-S.

>10 raton-liseur: Good luck with Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. I have not made it through that one, though it is the tone rather than the subject matter that grates with me. I am trying another title that covers some of the same historical ground, The rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk.

I don't think I mentioned it yet but I read Motorcycle Diaries for this challenge. Author Che Guevara. Its less about the scenery and more about how he formed his socialist ideology.

>12 markon: Good that I have seen your post only a couple of days ago when I had only a handful of pages left!
The reading was difficult, especially at the beginning. One would probably not write a non fiction book the same way nowadays. But I'm glad I've read it. I got a lot from it, although would not really recommand it to today's readers as there are probably more recent and accessible works on this theme.
I"ve seen on your thread you also have reservations regarding The Rediscovery of AMerica. Anyway, I'm not ready yet for another book on that subject...

>11 booksaplenty1949: I've read this book a long time ago and don't remember it well. You make me want to read it again, to have a fresh view on Levi Strauss.

>14 raton-liseur: I gather that TT was put together in book form from articles L-S had published elsewhere, which would account for its digressions from South America. There is also some debate about how much time he spent actually observing local tribes there. But he is a lively stylist, at least in the Weightmans’ translation.

>15 booksaplenty1949: No, I don't think Tristes Tropiques was based on previous articles. I do think it's an original work.
On the other hand, I've heard about the controversy about the time Levi Strass spent in the field. I think anyway he was more of a theory builder than a field guy.
Tristes Tropiques has been (and to a certain extent still is) an important book in France. The incipit is part of those sentences many people know (well at least those interested in the topic or in this type of books...). So yes, I agree with you, he knows how to write! I see that the title has not been translated into English, which is interesting as well.

>16 raton-liseur: I based my comment on the composition on an LT review posted July1, 2023 by member markm2315.

>16 raton-liseur: This article https://www.cerisepress.com/04/10/centennial-sauvage-the-survival-of-tristes-tro... makes only one reference to material in the book which had been previously published.

>17 booksaplenty1949: Tristes Tropiques was written and published in 1955. It is the second title in the famous editorial collection “Terres humaines”, started in 1954 by Jean Malaurie who is also the author of the first book, Les Derniers Rois de Thulé. This collection is fairly famous in France (at least it was, maybe less now).
Lévi-Strauss seems to have written Tristes tropiques following a direct ask from Jean Malaurie. It is based on his previous travels, notes and work, as it is a memoir or a travelogue of some sort, so I would say that from this point of view it is based on existing material, but I have seen no evidence of it being a gathering of existing articles! It’s right that it seems to have been written over a short period of time, four months according to some sources.
I am nor a specialist, nor a defender of Lévi-Strauss, so you might be right, but I’ve never heard that before, and a short research on internet did not show any evidence of that. So I’m not trying to make you change your mind on Tristes tropiques, just trying to state the importance this book has had in its time (I am not keen on this type of lists, but it’s included in a few “100 best books”-type lists in France).
I’ve read it too young to get much from it, so it’s on my reread-one-day list, and I hope that I’ll enjoy it more than you did. 😉

Sorry, I posted my reply without seing your >18 booksaplenty1949: message. Thanks for the link!

I read Continent in Beweging by Cees Nooteboom. It’s a compilation of his travel writing in South and Middle America. Quite interesting, as the first essays are from the 1950’s! Bolivia, Brazil, Patagonia, Costa Rica, Surinam. He writes about what he sees, but he’s also very well acquainted with local history. Nooteboom died this year, and I wanted to read something by him. This book didn’t disappoint.

I finished Candice Millard's excellent debut book, The River of Doubt, for this challenge. Well worth the reread!

As stated earlier, I read Burry my heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, which was not easy to read (the reading does not particularly flow). I did not have time to read The children of Sánchez, autobiography of a Mexican family by Oscar Lewis, but hope I'll find some time latter this year to tackle it.

I finished yesterday a book that I did not really plan to read. It was on the top of a pile that I need to put on my shelves and I figured it was fitting so perfectly this month theme that I could not pass the opportunity. It's Les Indiens du Brésil by Jean de Léry.
Jean de Léry (1534 or 1536–1613) was one of the first people to embrace the Reformed religion. He happened to be part of a small group of fellow Protestants who went to an island (then called Fort Coligny) in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 1557 to 1558. The aim was to form a colony of Protestants, founded and headed by the Chevalier de Villegagnon, but the project soon dysfunctioned, and Jean de Léry and others returned to Europe after one year or so. In 1578, Jean de Léry published a book, Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amérique / History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Also Called America. A large part of it includes descriptions of the Tuninamba and their way of life, including cannibalism. But Jean de Léry uses a very factual tone and does not judge or condemn, which makes for a book very different from similar travel accounts from tat time.
Jean de Léry's book is still highly regarded in France (in circles that have heard about this book, mainly ethnographers and anthropologists). it has inspired Montaigne in one of his essays (Des cannibales, which I should read). It is considered as being the root of the myth of the noble savage, that has been so important in France mainly in the 18th century. And it is mentioned by Claude Lévi-Struass in Tristes tropiques as a must-read for ethnologists, which unexpectedly brings us back to a conversation earlier about this last book.

The book I've read is much shorter, as it includes 4 chapters from the original one (counting 22 chapters), all centered around the Tupinamba life. It was not always easy to read (as the language was not modernised), but short enough to be informative and an entertaining read.

And now, heading to Cuba!

>9 m.belljackson: Nice. Thank you for that, Marianne.

>23 raton-liseur: Some great stuff there. I read Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America which was a tremendously incendiary piece of writing.

Cuba here we come!

I accidentally clicked out of this month's Cuba - how to get it back?

>25 m.belljackson: Here is the link to the thread: Cuba authors.
You should be able to un-click out?

>26 raton-liseur: Got there - Thank You!