Writing Women in Central America


Book Description

What is the relationship between history and fiction in a place with a contentious past? And of what concern is gender in the telling of stories about the past? This study explores these questions as it considers key Central American texts.




Women Writing Resistance


Book Description

Essays on Latinx and Caribbean identity and on globalization by renowned women writers, including Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Jamaica Kincaid Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the voices of sixteen acclaimed writer-activists for a one-of-a-kind collection. Through poetry and essays, writers from the Anglophone, Hispanic, and Francophone Caribbean, including Puertorriqueñas and Cubanas, grapple with their hybrid American political identities. Gloria Anzaldúa, the founder of Chicana queer theory; Rigoberta Menchú, the first Indigenous person to win a Nobel Peace Prize; and Michelle Cliff, a searing and poignant chronicler of colonialism and racism, among many others, highlight how women can collaborate across class, race, and nationality to lead a new wave of resistance against neoliberalism, patriarchy, state terrorism, and white supremacy.




The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature


Book Description

The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature is an essential resource for anyone interested in the development of women's writing in Latin America. Ambitious in scope, it explores women's literature from ancient indigenous cultures to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Organized chronologically and written by a host of leading scholars, this History offers an array of approaches that contribute to current dialogues about translation, literary genres, oral and written cultures, and the complex relationship between literature and the political sphere. Covering subjects from cronistas in Colonial Latin America and nation-building to feminicide and literature of the indigenous elite, this History traces the development of a literary tradition while remaining grounded in contemporary scholarship. The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature will not only engage readers in ongoing debates but also serve as a definitive reference for years to come.




Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean


Book Description

"This is a very exciting collection that will fill an important gap in what has emerged in comparative studies of women and Latin American democracies. Maier and Lebon provide provocative overview essays, and the chapters trace a range of cases from Argentina and Brazil to Nicaragua and Venezuela, showing how institutions. leaders and culture all shape the opportunities and challenges women face."---Jane Jaquette, editor of Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America --




Bogotá 39


Book Description

‘This new generation of Latin American writers has exchanged history for memory, dictators for narcos and political engagement for gender and class consciousness.’ El País Ten years on from the first Bogotá 39 selection, which brought writers such as Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alejandro Zambra and Junot Díaz to fame, comes this story collection showcasing thirty-nine exceptional new talents. Chosen by some of the biggest names in Latin American literature, together with publishers, writers and literary critics and a panel of expert judges, this exciting anthology paves the way for a new generation of household names. These stories have been brought into English by some of the finest translators around, including familiar names such as Daniel Hahn, Christina MacSweeney and Megan McDowell, as well as many new and exciting translators who are just launching their careers. With authors from fifteen different countries, this diverse collection of stories transports readers to a host of new worlds, and represents the very best writing coming out of Latin America today.




Women and Social Movements in Latin America


Book Description

Women's grassroots activism in Latin America combines a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to women's subordination to men. Women activists insist that issues such as rape, battering, and reproductive control cannot be divorced from women's concerns about housing, food, land, and medical care. This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women's grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile. Lynn Stephen communicates the ideas, experiences, and perceptions of women who participate in collective action, while she explains the structural conditions and ideological discourses that set the context within which women act and interpret their experiences. She includes revealing interviews with activists, detailed histories of organizations and movements, and a theoretical discussion of gender, collective identity, and feminist anthropology and methods.




Latin American Writers


Book Description

Discusses writers of the New World and provides a critial analyses of today's outstanding writers.




Empowering Women


Book Description

The expansion of married women's property rights was a main achievement of the first wave of feminism in Latin America. As Carmen Diana Deeere and Magdalena Leon reveal, however, the disjuncture between rights and actual ownership remains vast. This is particularly true in rural areas, where the distribution of land between men and women is highly unequal. In their pioneering, twelve-country comparative study, the authors argue that property ownership is directly related to womenÆs bargaining power within the household and community, point out changes resulting from recent gender-progressive legislation, and identify additional areas for future reform, including inheritance rights of wives.




The Little School


Book Description

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared," Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s. Told in a series of tales that resound in memory like parables, The Little School is proof of the resilience of the human spirit and the healing powers of art. This second edition features a revised introduction by the author and a preface by Julia Alvarez.




Women & Guerrilla Movements


Book Description

The revolutionary movements that emerged frequently in Latin America over the past century promoted goals that included overturning dictatorships, confronting economic inequalities, and creating what Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara called the &"new man.&" But, in fact, many of the &"new men&" who participated in these movements were not men. Thousands of them were women. This book aims to show why a full understanding of revolutions needs to take account of gender. Karen Kampwirth writes here about the women who joined the revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the Mexican state of Chiapas, about how they became guerrillas, and how that experience changed their lives. In the last chapter she compares what happened in these countries with Cuba in the 1950s, where few women participated in the guerrilla struggle. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, Kampwirth examines the political, structural, ideological, and personal factors that allowed many women to escape from the constraints of their traditional roles and led some to participate in guerrilla activities. Her emphasis on the experiences of revolutionaries adds a new dimension to the study of revolution, which has focused mainly on explaining how states are overthrown.