Between the Lines: The Battles in the Desert & Other Stories by José Emilio Pacheco - Meetings 1-3 in Philadelphia

Between the Lines: The Battles in the Desert & Other Stories by José Emilio Pacheco - Meetings 1-3

The Penn Museum invites you to unlock the human experience through literature. Join us for a unique twist on the classic book club model featuring carefully curated books with cultural connections, moderated by Penn Museum curators and special guests. A new book will be featured each month, from June through December.

Each month, Between the Lines participants will meet three times through interactive video conferencing: a kickoff, a check-in, and a concluding meeting at the end of the book. Readers are encouraged to continue the conversation and chat beyond these virtual meetings in the private Between the Lines Facebook Group. The moderator will share additional connections to the collection, supplemental readings and videos, and guiding questions through the virtual meetings and Facebook group.

December's Featured Book
The Battles in the Desert & Other Stories by José Emilio Pacheco
From one of Mexico’s leading poets, Battles in the Desert & Other Stories is the first book of José Emilio Pacheco’s fiction to appear in English. This collection of short fiction that deals mainly with themes of childhood and innocence betrayed. Pacheco confronts the reader with the uglier sides of urban Mexico––its grime, its beggars, its suffocating pollution, the constricted lives of its lower middle class––all with a simplicity and directness of style. Pacheco himself has said that he believes that his work could never really appeal to anyone outside of Mexico City, yet none of us lives very far from the city he portrays. His sinking, stinking metropolis becomes a metaphor for something much larger and threatening, and we respond with natural feeling to his quiet-spoken outrage. Battles in the Desert & Other Stories, a companion volume to the author’s bilingual Selected Poems, includes work written over a period of two decades. The stories were translated by Katherine Silver, who has also translated Pacheco’s poetry.

Moderated by Carlos José Pérez Sámano
Global Guide, Mexico and Central America Gallery
Born in Mexico City, Carlos José Pérez Sámano is part of the “Earthquake Generation,” a generation of people living in Mexico known for their resilience and commitment to helping others, as a result of a 1985 earthquake that caused major destruction and casualties. Carlos began his work in marketing for a transnational company but he exited this job for new opportunity building rural schools in East Africa, where he learned to speak Swahili.

After living in Tanzania, he founded Experiex Trips, a social enterprise that changes the way people experience cultures through immersion trips. Carlos is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Mexican Global Network, a network of talented Mexicans in diaspora with more than 6,000 members worldwide. An expert storyteller with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Publishing, Carlos is the author of four books and a contributor to numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Learn more at perezsamano.com. 

$5 General Admission
Includes 3 meetings.

Categories: Literary & Books | Museums & Attractions

This event repeats weekly on Mondays for 4 times: