Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District

Argueta's Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light district is a complex and many layered book. It is an artistically brilliant and intellectually incisive document of human rights violations, the struggle for freedom and the ways in which people find to survive keeping hope, heart and meaning alive. Argueta depicts the devastations of a specific place/time (El Salvador, 1970s) in Latin American history that succeeds, as well, as a universal story of the devastation of violation, the attempt to create meaning out of that devastation, the construction of identity, the strength of the human heart/spirit, and a fairy tale retelling that is a passionate and insightful exploration of what it is to be human. Little Red Riding... won the Casa de las Americas in 1977. The form/structure of the novel is complex; a double of the content. Form: layers, pieces, like short stories or fragments that fit with each other and grow in depth and complexity and meaning as one reads and re-reads. Different voices are woven together, using the testimonial style, giving voice to the main characters as well as minor characters, so giving voice to the unheard/silenced. The narrative is written in the first, second and third person; and there are shifts in time (flashbacks etc. the book in non-linear) and point of view and style (letters, journal style entries, interview style, external dialogue/interior dialogue, surreal dream-like segments). Argueta writes some scenes in a straightforward voice, a literal kind of reality that can be gritty, raw, dark,brutal; at other times the book reads like poetry that is dream-like, representational, the voice that seems to speak out of a myth that is symbolic, insightful, artistically visionary. The writing is honest, evocative, insightful, intellectual, artistic, original, thought-provoking. I found the shifting voices and styles interesting and compelling. If you can let yourself take pleasure in each piece, and not need to have a complete grasp of the plot of the book at all times,trust the text, the story as an entire picture will take shape, the individual pieces will fall into place, there is a cohesive and coherent story here, the bits and pieces do add up. The book is intricate in form and in meaning. There is a lot of darkness and pain in the book, and light and hope too. It is not an easy,quick read; but a book to read slowly, to think about, and I think its very rewarding. The content is a many nested Story. Argueta plays with many themes and works on many levels with layers of significant and thought-provoking meanings and stories within stories. This compelling investigation into morality begins with the story of lovers, Alfonso and Ant,(characters/wolf,little red riding hood) set during the military dictatorship in El Salvador in the 1970s. (context/red light district) The book works as both a specific testimony to this time and as a document and exploration/investigation of all extreme situations of abus