Set in the highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas, The Book of Lamentations tells of a fictionalized Mayan uprising that resembles many of the rebellions that have taken place since the indigenous people of the area were first conquered by European invaders five hundred years ago. With the panoramic sweep of a Diego Rivera mural, the novel weaves together dozens of plot lines, perspectives, and characters. Blending a wealth of historical information and local detail with a profound understanding of the complex relationship between victim and tormentor, Castellanos captures the ambiguities that underlie all struggles for power. A masterpiece of contemporary Latin American fiction from Mexico’s greatest twentieth-century woman writer, The Book of Lamentations was translated with an afterword by Ester Allen and introduction by Alma Guillermoprieto.
A member of Mexico's privileged upper class, yet still subordinated because of her gender, Rosario Castellanos became one of Latin America's most influential feminist social critics. Joanna O'Connell here offers the first book-length study of all Castellanos' prose writings, focusing specifically on how Castellanos' experiences as a Mexican woman led her to an ethic of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of her home state of Chiapas. O'Connell provides an original and detailed analysis of Castellanos' first venture into feminist cultural analysis in her essay Sobre cultura feminina (1950) and traces her moral and intellectual trajectory as feminist and social critic. An overview of Mexican indigenismo establishes the context for individual chapters on Castellanos' narratives of ethnic conflict (the novels Balún Canán and Oficio de tinieblas and the short stories of Ciudad Real). In further chapters O'Connell reads Los convidados de agosto,Album de familia, and Castellanos' four collections of essays as developments of her feminist social analysis.
Written in 1960, these stories unfold in the Mexican state of Chiapas—the later site of the Zapatista uprising, and the author addresses controversial questions of power, class, race, and language, giving insight into the historical background of a political struggle still going on today. The complex relationship of conquerors and conquered is explored with masterful writing that earned Rosario Castellanos a permanent place in the literary history of Mexican authors.
Eighteen women, including Jamaica Kincaid, Rigoberta Menchú, Cherríe Moraga, Marjorie Agosin, Margaret Randall, Gloria Anzaldúa, Michelle Cliff, Edwidge Danticat, and Julia Alvarez, are featured in this powerful anthology on art, feminism, and activism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Women Writing Resistance highlights Latin American and Caribbean women writers who, with increasing urgency, are writing in the service of social justice and against the entrenched patriarchal, racist, and exploitative regimes that have ruled their countries. Many of the women in this collection have been thrust out into the Latino-Caribbean diaspora by violent forces that make differences in language and culture seem less significant than connections based on resistance to inequality and oppression. It is these connections that Women Writing Resistance highlights, presenting "conversations" on the potential of writing to confront injustice. This mixed-genre anthology, a resource for activists and readers of Latin American and Caribbean women's literature, demonstrates and enacts how women can collaborate across class, race and nationality, and illustrates the value of this solidarity in the ongoing struggles for human rights and social justice in the Americas. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University, specializing in contemporary Caribbean, Latin American, and ethnic North American autobiographies by women. She teaches literature and gender studies courses at Simon's Rock College of Bard, and is also a faculty member at the University at Albany, SUNY.
This collection brings together 53 stories that span the history of Latin American literature and represent the most dazzling achievements in the form. It covers the entire history of Latin American short fiction, from the colonial period to present.
The only recent English-language work on Spanish-American indigenismo from a literary perspective, Estelle Tarica’s work shows how modern Mexican and Andean discourses about the relationship between Indians and non-Indians create a unique literary aesthetic that is instrumental in defining the experience of mestizo nationalism. Engaging with narratives by Jess Lara, Jos Mara Arguedas, and Rosario Castellanos, among other thinkers, Tarica explores the rhetorical and ideological aspects of interethnic affinity and connection. In her examination, she demonstrates that these connections posed a challenge to existing racial hierarchies in Spanish America by celebrating a new kind of national self at the same time that they contributed to new forms of subjection and discrimination. Going beyond debates about the relative merits of indigenismo and mestizaje, Tarica puts forward a new perspective on indigenista literature and modern mestizo identities by revealing how these ideologies are symptomatic of the dilemmas of national subject formation. The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism offers insight into the contemporary resurgence and importance of indigenista discourses in Latin America. Estelle Tarica is associate professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of California, Berkeley.