“Delightfully unpredictable. … Humor, pathos, poverty and courage are just a few of the recurrent elements in the volume. The translation of each story appears on the page facing the Spanish.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“Cuentos: Stories from Puerto Rico: Twelve Short Stories by Six of Puerto Rico’s Most Distinguished Writers, edited by Kal Wagenheim, is a bilingual anthology of twelve short stories, many of which appeared in the 1960s in the English-language magazine The San Juan Review.”
— New West Indian Guide
“El libro Cuentos: Stories from Puerto Rico del editor y periodista Kal Wagenheim recoge una antología de doce historias escritas por autores boricuas entre las décadas del 40 al 60. Periodista nacido y radicado en Nueva Jersey, estudioso de la historia de Puerto Rico, residió en la isla entre 1961 a 1970. Wagenheim explicó a Efe que nueve de los escritos relatan las vivencias en ese país y tres sobre las experiencias de los puertorriqueños en Nueva York. La obra que se relanzó esta semana después de tres décadas está compuesta de cuentos cortos de la autoría de seis de los más distinguidos escritores boricuas, cinco de ellos ya fallecidos.
“Los temas van desde la conquista española en el siglo XXI, hasta la emigración de los puertorriqueños a Estados Unidos.
Desde el humor negro del escritor Emilio Díaz Valcárcel en “La Muerte Obligatoria”, hasta la triste historia de José Luis González, titulada “En el fondo del caño hay un negrito”, explica el autor quien fuera corresponsal del diario The New York Times en Puerto Rico durante la época en que vivió en el país caribeño.
“El libro comprende los escritos originales en español y su versión en inglés con los relatos peculiares de historias cómicas, tristes o sobre la pobreza que representan las vivencias de los puertorriqueños en la época y que fueron publicados en los años sesenta en la revista en inglés The San Juan Review, fundada por Kal Wagenheim y Augusto Font.
Para el proyecto de la segunda edición, Wagenheim fue contactado por Markus Wiener, titular de la editorial Wiener, en Princeton, motivado por el gran mercado puertorriqueño e hispano particularmente en Nueva Jersey cuya población latina asciende a 1,4 millones de habitantes.
“‘Lo más triste es que cinco de los autores están muertos, aunque tenemos a Díaz Valcárcel quien vive en Puerto Rico,’ dijo el editor de la obra que incluye cuentos de Emilio Belaval, Pedro Juan Soto, René Marqués, Abel ardo Díaz Alfaro.
El proyecto del libro nace en 1971, cuando Wagenheim sugiere a Ricardo Alegría, el entonces director del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, preparar un libro en inglés con la recopilación de una antología de 12 cuentos. La obra es presentada más tarde, en 1978 en una nueva edición en inglés y castellano.
“La variedad de estilos en los autores más importantes de la literatura puertorriqueña hacen de la obra una ventana a la cultura borinqueña, por lo que el libro tiene un lugar importante en la Sala Hispanoamericana de la Biblioteca Pública de Newark, dijo Ingrid Betancourt, coordinadora de servicios hispanos de la institución.”
— El Sentinel of Orlando
“Latinos and non-Hispanics alike will be able to enjoy the bilingual collection Cuentos: Anthology of Short Stories from Puerto Rico.
“Stories by Emilio S. Beleval, Rene Marques, Pedro Juan Soto, Abelardo Diaz Alfaro, Jose Luis Gonzalez and Emilio Diaz Varcarcel — the only one still alive — were written in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, times of social and political change on the island, according to Kal Wagenheim, the compiler of the anthology.
“Wagenheim, a journalist from New Jersey, lived in Puerto Rico from 1961-1970, a period when he took part in founding the monthly magazine The San Juan Review, which published stories by Puerto Rican authors translated into English.
“Acclaimed writer Pedro Juan Soto was the editor of the literary section and had the English versions prepared by tranlators he chose himself, recalls Wagenheim, who still spends a great deal of time on the island.
“‘All this began in 1964 when I met Augusto Font, recently graduated from a university in Pennsylvania, and we decided to launch a monthly magazine in English, which besides reporting on politics and the economy, would publish Puerto Rican stories translated into English. That was something that wasnt done very often,’ said Wagenheim, who worked as the San Juan correspondent for The New York Times.
“Three years later the magazine closed down, but it had published some 30 Puerto Rican stories in English.
“Wagenheim spoke with the then-director of the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, or ICP, Ricardo Alegria, to whom he suggested publishing the stories as a book in English for people unfamiliar with Puerto Rican literature.
“‘A small edition of 12 stories was published in English only, but it was not widely distributed,’ Wagenheim said. He returned to the United States in 1971 with his wife, whom he met on the island, and they settled in New York, where they published several books on Puerto Rican history in English.
“‘At the time I asked the editor of Schocken (publishers) if he had any interest in publishing short stories. In 1978 the first bilingual edition of the book was published, with the 12 stories by Puerto Rican writers,’ he said, adding that the ICP had previously published these stories in English.
“Thirty years later, Markus Wiener of Wiener Publishers in Princeton, New Jersey, got in touch with Wagenheim, interested in publishing Cuentos again.
“‘He called me and said there was growing interest in bilingual education in the United States, which is true, particularly in New Jersey, where the Hispanic population has grown 20 percent in recent years, reaching 1.4 million in this state. He asked me if I could bring the preface up to date, a sad mission because five of the authors had died,’ he said.
” … According to Wagenheim, through this work readers who only speak English can get to know these well-known Puerto Rican writers, and at the same time ‘those who want to improve their English can do so while enjoying first the version in Spanish and then comparing it with the translation.'”
— America Reads Spanish
“Cuentos: Stories from Puerto Rico is an anthology of twelve short stories by six of Puerto Rico’s most distinguished writers, compiled and edited by Kal Wagenheim, co-founder of The San Juan Review and author of several books and plays. Each story is printed in English mirroring the original Spanish on every page. The stories in this volume are the voice of an era, telling of poverty, culture and societal issues of Puerto Rican identity. This bilingual resource of Hispanic literature shows the panorama of cultural duality and situations of a certain time, still present today in Puerto Rico and in many minority and ethnic groups living in the United States. It is a wonderful collection that engulfs the whole of traditions, roots and boundaries of the ‘daily life of a Puerto Rican. It’s for anyone searching for the best in Puerto Rican literature and can be appreciated by Puerto Ricans living in the island and beyond in both Spanish and English.
“‘Los Campeones’ and ‘Los Inocentes’ by Pedro Juan Solo are vivid examples of the daily life and situations that occur to Puerto Ricans living in the United States. It touches upon social challenges, family morals and other issues. ‘Los Campeones’ is about a teenager that earns respect from his fellow players at the pool hall and reaches manhood by surpassing all of them. In ‘Los Inocentes,’ an elderly mother cares for her mentally ill son and is devastated by her own decision to send him to an institution, finally accepting that she no longer has the strength to keep him.
“Rene Marques, famous Puerto Rican playwright known for works such as ‘La Carreta,’ which has been translated into dozens of languages, deals with Puerto Rican migration to the United States. The versatility of this author includes other themes such as the Spanish conquistadores arriving to the island where the Taino indians thought them to be gods in ‘Tres hombres junto al no (Three men by the river)’ and ‘Purification en la calle de cristo (Purification on Cristo Street),’ where three elderly sisters living in a San Juan townhouse remember past days and live in a grim and menacing world where all they have is each other.
“While not all stories share the same situations and take place at different periods of time, they are very well tied in and seamlessly share the Puerto Rican consciousness and identity.”
— Adele Negron, Puerto Rico Daily Sun
“The insights [it] provide[s] make this small volume a valuable one for academics and for public libraries.”
— Choice