Peru - Ventura Garcia Calderon

The Lottery Ticket

Published

December 28, 2021

Ventura Garcia Calderon

Ventura García Calderón (1886–1959) was a Peruvian man of letters and a diplomat who was at the center of the hispanophone community in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. Known as a proponent of Spanish American literature, García Calderón achieved a global celebrity for his dramatic, colorful, and ironic short stories. These stories, published in both Spanish and French, feature a raw depiction of reality, a strong sense of retributive justice, and a sympathy for the marginalized people that characterize European Naturalism. García Calderón adapted this style to advance his goal of providing European readers with an authentic understanding of Peru and Spanish America, thus replacing the voyeuristic and patronizing notion of the “exotic” inherited from literary romanticism and nineteenth-century travel writers.

The construction of García Calderón’s stories was subversive and destabilized the widespread notion of Peru held by European critics and readers. While international critics during the author’s lifetime unanimously praised García Calderón’s fiction as well as his essays that theorize the transformation and renaissance of Spanish language and literature by americano writers, scholars since the 1960s have largely misunderstood his reformative project.

Story

We will read Ventura Garcia Calderon’s short short story, The Lottery Ticket

Themes

  • Marginalized People
  • Colour
  • Women and Objectification
  • Mob Justice
  • The Art of Protest!

Additional Material

  1. Kursi Nashin: A Certificate of Discrimination from British India

  1. Review of The Lottery Ticket https://caponomics.blogspot.com/2013/05/short-story-review-lottery-ticket-by.html

  2. Ventural Garcia Calderon at Short Story Magic Tricks: https://shortstorymagictricks.com/2021/07/06/the-lottery-ticket-by-ventura-garcia-calderon/

  3. Goldberg, N. S. (2014). Rereading Ventura García Calderón. Hispania, 97(2), 220–232. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24368768

Notes and References

  1. Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory and the Scapegoat: https://violenceandreligion.com/mimetic-theory/

  2. Frear, G. L. (1992). René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 12, 115–133. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23559770

  3. The Beauty of Fat Women: Leonard Nimoy (“Mr Spock”) and his Full Body Project: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/03/the-full-body-project-by-leonard-nimoy-in-pictures

Leonard Nimoy, who died February 27,2015 at the age of 83, was beloved by fans for his distinctive portrayal of Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Those fans may not have known that Nimoy, through his work as a photographer, also championed women who did not conform to Hollywood’s ideal of physical perfection. [see also http://mashable.com/2015/02/26/body-positivity-get-involved In 2007, Nimoy published The Full Body Project, a collection of photos featuring nude women of many shapes and sizes. Nimoy’s previous book of photographs captured images of nude women as well, though the models’ slim bodies hewed closely to the conventional standards of beauty. The inspiration for The Fully Body Project struck when a full-figured woman approached Nimoy and asked if he might photograph her and her friends.

Listen to Leonard Nimoy discuss this project on NPR:

  1. It Ain’t Over until the Fat Lady Sings: https://knowyourphrase.com/aint-over-until-the-fat-lady-sings

  2. Is it all about Hips? http://bollynatyam.com/books/

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ByAbV-MKDgs?si=PU26bRl2sXOynWpL

Songs for the Story !!

Song for the Black Hero of this story

  • Title: What About Me?
  • Band: Moving Pictures
  • Band Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
  • Album: Days Of Innocence
  • Composed By: Garry Frost, Frances Swan
  • Release Date: January, 1982
  • Chart Position:
    • No.1 (Australia)
    • No.29 (US Billboard Hot 100)


Song for Cielito

  • Title: Bette Davis Eyes
  • Artiste: Kim Carnes
  • Album: Mistaken Identity
  • Composed by: Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon
  • Year: 1981
  • Chart Position:
    • No.1 (Australia)
    • No.1 (US Billboard Hot 100)
    • No. 10 (UK Singles Charts)

The “Lottery” Idea in Literature

  1. Shirley Jackson, The Lottery. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery
  2. Munshi Premchand. Lottery, short story in Hindi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_(short_story)
  3. Anton Chekhov, The Lottery Ticket. https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lottery.html
  4. Jose Luis Borges. The Lottery of Babylon.

Writing Prompt

  1. How I went on Strike
  2. On an ad for Fairness Cream
  3. On a personal encounter with racism/bias
  4. Did I win the Lottery?
  5. Compare Cielito with the Prostitute in Guy de Maupassant’s story Boule de Suif.
Back to top