Literature/Discussion

I’m Your Horse in the Night

Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5JEHRWzq4

Pronounce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5R5y4lGW8

The question is: When is Chiquita awake; imagining; physically, mentally, and/or emotionally tortured; dreaming; escaping, and/or witch-craft-bound?

This story is a member of the South American political story-telling ”genre.” With a history of multiple generations of dictatorships overthrown by coups that are followed by another dictatorship and savage repressions followed by revolution, I’m Your Horse in the Night illustrates the harsh “realities” that such suffering brings.

It is love/lust story. It is psychoanalysis. It is government by terror.

Beto has disappeared. Or has he? Is he in hiding, imprisoned, dead?

Note that she really knows nothing of his location. She cannot betray him.

Look up the record. Why does the author musethis tool?

Notice this quote: “And if by some wild chance there’s a Gal Costa record and a half-empty bottle of cachaça in my house, I hope they’ll forgive me. I will them out of existence.” How does it summarize her state? What is her reality? How does she transcend it?