The Other Mirror: Women's Narrative in Mexico, 1980-1995

by Kristine Ibsen

Overview

During the last decade, women's narrative has become a recognized force in Mexican letters. The essays in this collection explore the recent work of nine contemporary Mexican women writers. Many of the works have been translated into English; some, like Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, have become international best sellers. The unprecedented commercial success of these novels has generated mixed reactions: at the same time that the secondary status afforded women's narrative has come to be questioned in many academic circles, some authors are dissociating themselves from women's writing. The essays in this volume address these issues, providing a much needed contribution to the study of women's narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313301803
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/25/1997
Series:	Contributions to the Study of World Literature , #80
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Lexile:	1460L (what's this?)

About the Author

KRISTINE IBSEN is Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of Author, Text and Reader in the Novels of Carlos Fuentes as well as several articles on Spanish American literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Kristine Ibsen
Displacement: Strategies of Transformation in Angeles Mastretta's Arráncame la vida by Danny J. Anderson
Transgression in the Comic Mode: Angeles Mastretta and Her Cast of Liberated Aunts by Dianna Niebylski
¿En dónde van a florear?: Elena Poniatowska's La "Flor de Lis" and the Problematics of Identity by Jeanne Vaughn
Light-Writing: Biography and Photography in Elena Poniatowska's Tinísima by Beth E. Jörgensen
Tinísima: The Construction of the Self Through the Structures of Narrative Discourse by Charlotte Ekland
Historiographic Metafiction or the Rewriting of History in Carmen Boullosa's Son vacas, somos puercos by Cynthia M. Tompkins
Cross-Dressing and the Birth of a Nation: Duerme by Carmen Boullosa by Salvador Oropesa
On Recipes, Reading, and Revolution: Postboom Parody in Como agua para chocolate by Kristine Ibsen
Storytelling in Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate by Yael Halevi
The Sound of Silence: Voices of the Marginalized in Cristina Pacheco's Narrative by Linda Egan
The Transformation of the Reader in María Luisa Puga's Pánico o peligro by Florence Moorhead-Rosenberg
Growing Up Jewish in Mexico: Sabina Berman's La bobe and Rosa Nissän's Novia que te vea by Darrell B. Lockhart
Bárbara Jacobs: Gendered Subjectivity and the Epistolary Essay by María Concepción Bados-Ciria
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Fourteen contributions analyze the recent work of nine writers, in an attempt to further the ongoing dialogue of the forces that have shaped contemporary women's narrative in Mexico. The authors suggest that it was not until the late 1980s, with the commercial success of work such as Laura Esquivel's "Como agua para chocolate" (translated in 1992 as "Like Water for Chocolate"), that the secondary status afforded to narrative written by women came to be questioned in some academic circles. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews