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| Tomas Bravo, Reuters |
Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer who blended literature, journalism and political satire in reflecting on the vagaries, injustices and small victories of history, died on Monday in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was 74.I was assigned Memory of Fire in a Latin American studies class as an undergrad in the early 90s. It opened my eyes to a mode of writing history I hadn't encountered before, and it turned history into something I wasn't just curious about, or wanted to know for knowing's sake -- it turned history into something I felt I had to understand to understand myself. Our history is part of our identity, whether we know it or not, and MoF taught me, among other things, that I didn't know shit, but I could learn. And that learning could be as fun as it was transformative.
It's possible I would have gone my entire life without ever hearing, even hearing of, Carlos Gardel if it weren't for MoF: Century of the Wind.
