Readings from Venezuela: 4 Texts to Take Students Beyond the Headlines
Posted on March 24, 2026
By Swarnim Khare
Students have probably seen extensive news coverage about Venezuela in the last few months. To accompany conversations in the classroom about narratives from the news cycle and shift the tone toward cultural landscapes, we’re offering a list of Venezuelan literature from Words Without Borders’ archives. These four short stories and poems, published with English translations alongside the original Spanish, give students a wonderful opportunity to explore themes including national identity and immigration, intergenerational friendships, and the fears and fantasies of both readers and writers.
1. “Making Peace” by Rafael Cadenas, translated by Lucy Greaves
To begin, read “Making Peace,” a poem by one of Venezuela’s best-known poets, Rafael Cadenas. Cadenas’s speaker greets the poem like an old friend, and sometimes even a foe. He addresses the poem he is writing, and turns that address into a negotiation. He asks many important questions of the poem, leaving the reader with their own burning question—can a poem respond to the poet? If so, how? The central theme of “making peace,” which is also the title of the poem, compels readers to think: What kind of peace does he want to make with the poem? Are the poem and the poet in some kind of conflict? If so, what might be the nature of that conflict? Cadenas’s tone is playful, bemused, and almost weary, leading his readers to wonder about the gap between what we mean to write and what actually comes out on the page. Students can watch a video of Cadenas reading the poem in Spanish below:
Potential Assignments for "Making Peace"
In the classroom, students may discuss the task of poetry and why it matters by asking: Which poem in their own lives would they like to have a conversation with? If they could address that poem, what would they say? Or, you might ask writing students to reflect on a project or assignment that they found challenging. Have they ever wrestled with a writing assignment or discovered that they couldn’t quite get their text to say what they meant? Ask them to try writing a message to their essay, story, or poem in which they express those frustrations.
2. “Requiem” by Slavko Zupcic, translated by Jeremy Osner
Next, read Slavko Zupcic’s short story, “Requiem,” about a narrator who once shoplifted a book, then discovered a day later that its author (Jorge Luis Borges, of all people) died. Convinced that the author died because he shoplifted his book, the narrator tests out this hypothesis by shoplifting other books well into adulthood. Find out what happens as the story progresses, and whether the narrator can prove his hypothesis right.
Potential Assignments for “Requiem”
In the classroom, to build empathy with the narrator and to prepare the students for analysis, you might ask: How might one characterize this narrator’s dilemma? Is the story a cautionary tale against taking things that do not belong to us, or is it a description of the narrator’s misplaced fear and fantasy? You might pair this story with another magical realist story on WWB Campus: Eduardo del Llano’s “Swimming Upstream,” about an ordinary man who finds himself in the body of a star baseball player.
3. “Axel, Itinerant Dog” by Ana Teresa Torres, translated by Lucy Greaves
In her piece titled “Axel, Itinerant Dog,” Ana Teresa Torres writes about Axel the dog, who was once a stray and has now moved continents to live with her neighbor, Lisa. As she describes Axel’s moods and movements, Torres takes us on a journey about a set of letters that her friend Milagros wrote to her about two dogs, sent from the same city that Axel comes from. Torres wants to believe that Axel is one of the two dogs her friend Milagros wrote to her about several years ago. This hunch prompts her to go back to her own home and seek out those yellowed and faded letters. Part detective story and part psychoanalytic reflection, this piece about emigration, female friendships, lost homes, and intergenerational attachment is held together with canine affection.
Potential Assignments for “Axel, Itinerant Dog”
In class, exercises for this piece could ask students to think about forms of intergenerational communication that are preserved in letters and photo albums. How do the old stories we may have heard suddenly crop up in, and even shape, the way we see the world around us? Advanced students and Spanish readers could write about how the author’s language of reflection has a layered and meandering nature, both in Spanish and in English. They could then be given an assignment to write similar reflections inspired by their pets, friends, and families.
4. “The Writer of Memories” by Doménico Chiappe, translated by Jonathan Blitzer
Finally, read the short story “The Writer of Memories” by Doménico Chiappe, where the narrator, an ambitious writer who has moved from Peru to Venezuela to Spain (just like Chiappe himself), realizes that he keeps writing novels that have the same plots as other novels, none of which he has read before. This goes on until he agrees to ghostwrite the life story of a mysterious old man whose fascinating memories seem too larger than life to be true. Equipped with a surprise ending, this story challenges our notions of originality and inspiration in literature and asks its readers to think about whether any story is ever brand new. Students can also read an interview with the author, conducted by the story’s translator. In the interview, the author details how he views his own journey and what national labels mean for a writer who has emigrated between different countries.
Potential Assignments for “The Writer of Memories”
In class, exercises may ask students to consider how moving from one country to another, under different circumstances, transforms an author’s work. You might also explain to your students that, toward the end of the story, we realize that every author is telling the stories of many different people whom they have encountered throughout their lives. Then, ask them to reflect on the people in their lives whose stories affect their own. As a challenge, ask advanced students: How does the incorporation of others’ stories into our own point toward the relational nature of both literature and life?