Unfolding the City

Women Write the City in Latin America

2006

Anne Lambright and Elisabeth Guerrero, editors

An original look at how Latin American women writers rethink urban space

For the first time, Unfolding the City addresses issues of gender and the urban in literature—particularly lesser-known works of literature—written by Latin American women from Mexico City to Buenos Aires.

Contributors: Debra A. Castillo, Sandra Messinger Cypess, Guillermo Irizarry, Naomi Lindstrom, Jacqueline Loss, Dorothy E. Mosby, Angel Rivera, Lidia Santos, Marcy Schwartz, Daniel Noemi Voionmaa, Gareth Williams.


Diverse literary selections and quality analyses make this required reading for Latin Americanists.

Choice

The city is not only built of towers of steel and glass; it is a product of culture. It plays an especially important role in Latin America, where urban areas hold a near-monopoly on resources and are home to an expanding population.

The essays in this collection assert that women’s views of the city are unique and revealing. For the first time, Unfolding the City addresses issues of gender and the urban in literature—particularly lesser-known works of literature—written by Latin American women from Mexico City, Santiago, and Buenos Aires. The contributors propose new mappings of urban space; interpret race and class dynamics; and describe Latin American urban centers in the context of globalization.

Contributors: Debra A. Castillo, Cornell U; Sandra Messinger Cypess, U of Maryland; Guillermo Irizarry, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Naomi Lindstrom, U of Texas, Austin; Jacqueline Loss, U of Connecticut; Dorothy E. Mosby, Mount Holyoke College; Angel Rivera, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Lidia Santos, Yale U; Marcy Schwartz, Rutgers U; Daniel Noemi Voionmaa, U of Michigan; Gareth Williams, U of Michigan.

Anne Lambright is associate professor of modern languages and literature at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Elisabeth Guerrero is associate professor of Spanish at Bucknell University.

Diverse literary selections and quality analyses make this required reading for Latin Americanists.

Choice

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Elisabeth Guerrero and Anne Lambright

Part I Mapping the City

1. Short Circuits: Gendered Itineraries in Recent Urban Fiction Anthologies from Latin America Marcy Schwartz
2. What Happened to the Cool City? Seventy Years of Women’s Narrative in Brazil Lidia Santos
3. On Being a Woman in the City of Kings: Women Writing (in) Contemporary Lima Anne Lambright
4. Failed Modernity:San Juan at Night in Mayra Santos Febres’s Cualquier miércoles soy tuya Guillermo B. Irizarry

Part II The Restless City

5. Anna’s Extreme Makeover: Revisiting Tolstoy in Karenina Express Debra A. Castillo
6. The “Uchronic”City:Writing (after) the Catastrophe Daniel Noemi Voionmaa
7. The Fourth World and the Birth of Sudaca Stigma Gareth Williams

Part III Cities of Difference

8. The Cultural Memory of Malinche in Mexico City:Stories by Elena Garro and Cristina Pacheco Sandra Messinger Cypess
9. Writing Home:Afro–Costa Rican Women Poets Negotiating Limón and San José Dorothy E. Mosby
10. Urban Legends:Tina Modotti and Angelina Beloffas Flâneusesin Elena Poniatowska’s Mexico City Elisabeth Guerrero

Part IV Other Cities

11. Modernity,Flirting,Seduction,and Urban Social Landscape in Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo’s El asombroso doctor Jover Ángel A. Rivera
12. Woman between Paris and Caracas: Iphigeniaby Teresa de la Parra Naomi Lindstrom
13. Amateurs and Professionals in Ena Lucía Portela’s Lexicon of Crisis Jacqueline Loss

Contributors

Index