‘Feminine Plural shows that a revolution is taking place in literature written in Portuguese and Spanish. After many years of being silenced by dictatorships, colonial injustice, and systemic problems of access to education, women from the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America are not only making their voices heard, but also, in the process, creating previously unseen literary forms in order to be able to tell their previously untold stories. I had not known how important it was to examine recent life-writing by women in my own language until I had this book in my hands. And if I needed proof that a personal story is more than a small cog in the mechanics of the world, this is it.’ – Susana Moreira Marques, writer
‘For several decades now, women’s autobiographical writing has been flourishing. Many women writers narrate their personal experience, marked out by their condition of womanhood, by experiences such as their relationship with their mothers, migration, adoption, racism, motherhood, the rural world, infertility, sexuality, exile … In this well-documented and entertaining book, two great experts in Luso-Hispanic women’s literature, Maria-José Blanco and Claire Williams, introduce and guide the reader through this vast new field of writing.’ – Laura Freixas, writer
In the short period since our volume Feminine Singular came out, life-writing by women in the Luso-Hispanic world has proliferated, justifying another book of essays on the topic. Not only are more women choosing to write (about) themselves, they are doing so in innovative ways that cross conventional generic boundaries. They openly discuss previously taboo subjects, speak out against injustice and provoke changes in policy and attitudes. Furthermore, they embrace plurality, by recognising the achievements of their foremothers and celebrating their peers; expressing themselves through fragmentation and collage; and, ultimately, working and reading and writing together.
These essays introduce an Anglophone readership to some of the most exciting and audacious Luso-Hispanic women writing and making art today. They bring together a mixture of personal essays and short fiction, alongside more traditional literary critical research, to show what women’s life-writing can do.
Table of Contents: List of Figures and Tables - Preface - Acknowledgments - Introduction - Speaking Up and Speaking Out: The Expanding Field of Women’s Life-Writing in the Luso-Hispanic World, Maria-José Blanco and Claire Williams - 1. Life-Writing in the Hispanic World, Maria-José Blanco - 2. Life-Writing in the Lusophone World, Claire Williams - PART I: Writers and Artists at Work - 3. Clavicle, an Excerpt, Marta Sanz - 4. ‘Holy Land’, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida - 5. ‘What is an Autora?’ and ‘Being Latin@’, Two Crónicas from Viajar Sola, Liliana Chávez Díaz - 6. How to Deal with Being Brazilian – Some Brief Thoughts on Sense of Place, Representation and the Stories I Can Tell, Carol Bensimon - 7. On Transitions and Belonging: Multiple Narratives of Contemporary Brazilian Art Diasporas, Cibelle, Pauline Batista, Rubiane Maia, Sylvia Morgado, Tete de Alencar, Márcia Thompson - PART II: Pushing the (Generic) Boundaries - 8. From the Love Boat to Noah’s Ark: The Unpublished Log-Book of Maria Ondina Braga, Isabel Cristina Mateus - 9. Ilse Losa’s ‘Chronic’ Border and Boundary Crossing, Rosa Churcher Clarke - 10. And the Writer Became a Grandmother: Josefina Aldecoa and Rosa Regàs, Maria-José Blanco - 11. Brazilian History Through Women’s Eyes: Ana Arruda Callado’s Feminist Biographies, Claire Williams - 12. Painful maternity: Illness and Mother-Daughter Relationships in Sangre en el ojo by Lina Meruane and Madre mía by Florencia del Campo, Beatriz Velayos Amo - 13. Post-Traumatic Transitions: Writing Women’s Lives in Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida, Hannie Lawlor - 14. From Puberty and Democracy to Menopause and Recession: Representations of Female Identity in the Works of Marta Sanz, Marta Simó-Comas - 15. Narrating Crossings: Mother / Daughter, Morocco / Spain, Catherine Bourland Ross - PART III: ‘Art Spaces and Border Crossings’ - 16. ‘Eu sou porque somos’: Women’s Resistance and Collaboration in Latin American Cultural Practices, María B. Batlle and Georgina Robinson - 17. The Transition(s) of Poetry into Arts, Languages and Gentes in Weiyamî: Mulheres que Fazem Sol, Anélia Montechiari Pietrani - 18. In the House of Celestina: Paula Rego and the Ageing Female Body, Maria Luísa Coelho - 19. ‘Todos ellos están equivocados’: Challenging Borders between Disciplines: Humour, Science and Anthropology in Remedios Varo’s De Homo Rodans, Nadia Albaladejo García - 20. A Curvy Revolution: Celebrating the Female Body in #Curvy by Covadonga D’lom and Flavita Banana, Diana Aramburu - Notes on the Contributors - Index
