The Voices and Lives of Latin American Women Writers

• Published in: Feminist Collections Vol. 18; no. 1; p. 8
• Main Author: Byrd, Carole
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Madison University of Wisconsin -- Madison 31.10.1996
• Subjects: 19th century; African Americans; Black literature; Civil rights; Creativity; Education; English language; Essays; Females; Feminism; Focus; Language history; Laughter; Literary criticism; Literature; Mistral, Gabriela (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) (1889-1957); Motion pictures; Nonfiction; Poetry; Politics; Spanish language; Spouses; Women; Womens rights movements; Writing; Mexico; Latin America
• ISSN: 2576-0750

"Concerning the Education of Women" by Teresa Gonzalez de Fanning is a curious but inspiring article that reads like the progressive politics of Bello, Echeverria, and Sarmiento in the Nineteenth Century Romantic arguments for the education of nations of further a liberal future. Daphne Patai critiques the celebration of Brazillian writer Jorge Amado's sexually liberated female characters (also represented in the popular films from the "abertura" - the brief period of liberalism and political openness in the sixties - in Brazil in [Gabriela Mistral] and Dona Flor and her Tow Husbands). Patai returns the privilege of deciding sexual freedom and body autonomy to women, insisting that Amado's sarcastic depiction of female desire in his texts was calculated "[T]here is nothing inevitable about the degradation of women by which Amado squeezes some laughter out of his audience". The second half of the book contains articles like Isaac Holton's "Daily Life in Nineteenth Century Columbia," that focus on the absence of historical representations of women's issues, particularly during the years of struggle for independence and the formation of the various republics. A look at the Twentieth Century suffrage movement by Francesca Miller helps to put Latin America's fight for women's right to vote into a global context. Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition is a "text" that provides reliable background for a variety of disciplines for studying women's issues, women's writing, and the conditions in which women live in Latin America. The last book of this review, [Marjorie Agosin]'s A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, is the one most likely to be selected for coursework because it includes the biographies or life stories of numerous contemporary women authors, particularly those whose bulk of creative production and general recognition make them likely "objects of study" for any course - in English, Spanish, or Women's Studies - highlighting women writers. On the other hand, this book could potentially be overlooked precisely because the collected articles present "literary criticism" of women's writing through biography, a trend consistent in teaching women as authors, but harshly criticized in feminist pedagogy for two specific reasons. First, to analyze writers solely through their biographies often establishes a "Great Men of History" way of looking at trends in writing. This practice also negates the value of all other writing not authorized through an artificial and rigid canon. In general, feminists do not support replacing the Historical tradition with an Herstorical tradition in this way. What we do support is he inclusion of as many voices as possible in the discussion of what is art, with strong emphasis on avoiding formalist tendencies that preclude certain writers based on class, gender, or race. Secondly, analyzing women, specifically, as writers through their life stories devalues their creative accomplishments. Without brushing over entirely the fact the information about the political and domestic conditions in which a writer works can help to contextualize his or her writing, focusing only on women's biography reinforces the notion that women's writing is somehow not art, not noteworthy. Agosin has contributed numerous anthologies of Latin American women's writing (most notably These are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women [White Pine Press, 1994]), as well as collections of critical articles, to the bulk of materials supporting women's writing, actively pushing towards broadening the canon in many ways. In this collection, she cleverly juxtaposes a series of women's biographies to critique the practice of making women's biography itself. The "portraits," as they are called, do not attempt to foster, in the words of Agosin, "unhealthy curiosity" into the lives (or life-styles) of women, nor do they make legendary the idea of strong women writing: the challenge they present to the reader is to see women writers as belonging to a valid, and vital, tradition within a "feminine corpus".