Manuel Zapata Olivella focuses on the lives of the inhabitants of a poor island barrio named Chambacú, near Cartagena, that is plagued by institutionally sanctioned terror and abuse. It chronicles how one of its residents uses language, in the form of graffiti, as protest, and inspires an uprising

Manuel Zapata Olivella, Chambacú: Black Slum. Trans. by Jonathan Tittler, Latin American Literary Review Press, 1989.

A powerful novel set amidst the misery of a mosquito-infested island, near the tropical city of Cartagena, in a masterful translation by Jonathan Tittler. The novel portrays the plight of a single mother and her family whose lives are touched irrevocably by the war between the United States and Korea. Uneducated, indigent, and disunited, the protagonists represent the condition of a countless diaspora of blacks throughout the Caribbean as well as that of the nations of Latin America and the Third World in general.

"...Olivella writes with the robust naturalism of Zola" --Publishers Weekly


"...Manuel Zapata Olivella tells of a Colombia and a Latin America we seldom hear about, yet the picture he paints is as familiar as a glance in the mirror. Chambacú: Black Slum centers on the tribulations of a long suffering Afro-Colombian mother and her man-children, archtypical figures we have seen before in literature from A Raisin in the Sun to The Women of Brewster Place ...." --Washington Post

“The boots galloped. They made a crack that had already turned into an echo before it smashed against the ancient walls. The hobnails of the human herd boomed. Shadows, dust, voices. They woke four sleeping centuries.” So opens Olivella’s Chambacú, an incredible and important book I think everyone, everywhere should read. The book’s economy of language stands out against the highly embellished magical realism that dominated the Columbian literary canon of the time, established by writers like Gabriel García Márquez. Its subject matter also stands in contrast to the canon. García Márquez’s novels often are centered around wealthy, European / White characters, while Olivella, an Afrolatino writer, focuses on the lives of the inhabitants of a poor island barrio named Chambacú, near Cartagena, that is plagued by institutionally sanctioned terror and abuse. It chronicles how one of its residents uses language, in the form of graffiti, as protest, and inspires an uprising. “There’s writing here too!” “Search the neighborhood! I want them dead or alive!” The soldiers’ reaction to the writing on the wall shows just how much is at stake when language is assertive, asserted. In Chambacú, the language, in its minimalism exquisite and urgent, embodies the aesthetic of the revolutionary slogan. There’s no time to graffiti baroque messages or long-winded litanies against the soldiers who abuse, incarcerate, forcibly enlist and torture them. But economical poetry can inspire revolution. And the power to yield language is as potent as any weapon, maybe even more, because it is born from the inside. Even the protagonist’s mother, La Cotena, struggling with the most wretched poverty, can yield power, “She cleaved the words with her teeth.” The language, fragmented, filled with agency, devoid of the passive voice so common in the Spanish language is an excellent example of the diversity of Latin American, or simply, American writing. The voices are there if you make it a priority to seek them. “Sheets, undershorts, and unfastened pajamas. They saw the soldiers flattened against the ground. The black cap like an enormous octopus head with its tentacles of guns and sabre daggers.” - Laura Vena