Feminine bodies that tell stories: Narratives by Central American women writers.
Nixon, Melody E.
2004
Abstract
This project examines four specific feminine figures in narrative works by Central American women writers from the 1950s to the present, a corpus of literature currently very understudied in the U.S. academy. Each chapter in the dissertation looks at one of four master narratives commonly used to talk about Central American history and identity: development, mestizaje, the patriarchal family, and leftist revolution, through the lenses of different feminine figures or bodies, respectively the land or nature, the indigenous woman, the mother, and the guerrillera. Using a wide range of narrative texts by women writers (novels, short stories, and testimonios), I argue that the feminine body in each of the texts represents a group or entity that is buried or repressed in the master narrative, and that by giving the silenced body a voice, or its own counter-narrative, these writers invest it with the function of a destabilizing force. The texts I analyze are: <italic>Barro</italic> by Paca Navas de Miralda, Y cuando las pascuas fueron de sangre and La voz que no cesaba de contar by Isabel Garma, <italic>Tierra de infancia</italic> by Claudia Lars, <italic> Sofia de los presagios, Waslala: Memorial del futuro, La mujer habitada </italic>, and <italic>El pais bajo nu piel: Memorias de amor y guerra </italic> by Gioconda Belli, <italic>La loca de Gandoca</italic> by Anacristina Rossi, <italic>Asalto al paraiso</italic> by Tatiana Lobo, <italic> La nina blanca y los pajaros sin pies</italic> and <italic> Siete relatos sobre el amor y la guerra</italic> by Rosario Aguilar, El regreso de las cigarras by Mercedes Durand, <italic>Album familiar </italic> by Claribel Alegria, <italic>No pertenezco a este siglo</italic> by Rosa Maria Britton, <italic>Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia</italic> by Elisabeth Burgos, <italic>Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas</italic> by Menchu, <italic>¡Yo tambien quiero ser alguien!: Testimonios acerca de la vida de la mujer embera en la Ciudad</italic> by Maria Magdalena Ramnek, <italic>Sobrepunto </italic> by Carmen Naranjo, <italic>Corazon ladino</italic> by Yolanda C. Martinez, <italic>Cenizas de Izalco</italic> and <italic>No me agarran viva: La mujer salvadorena en lucha</italic> by Alegria and D. J. Flakoll, <italic>A ras del suelo</italic> by Luisa Gonzalez, <italic> 49 centavos de felicidad</italic> by Maria del Carmen Escobar, <super> Apuntes de una historia de amor que no fue</super> and La noche de los escritores asesinos by Jacinta Escudos, and <italic>Mujeres en la alborada: Guerrilla y participacion femenina en Guatemala, 1973--1978 </italic> by Yolanda Colom.Subjects
Bodies Central American Feminine Narratives Stories Tell Women Writers
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