How do contemporary female authors in Latin America tackle gender
violence in their writings?
This book analyses the portrayal of violence against women in the works
of ten contemporary Latin American female authors: Alejandra Jaramillo
Morales, Laura Restrepo, Ena Lucia Portela, Wendy Guerra, Selva Almada,
Claudia Pineiro, Diamela Eltit, Carla Guelfenbein, Lydia Cacho and
Fernanda Melchor. Governments in Latin America have routinely failed to
protect women from abuse, threats, censorship, repressive policies on
reproduction rights, forced displacement, sex trafficking,
disappearances and femicides, and this book beats a new path through
these burning issues by drawing on the knowledges encapsulated by
sociology as much as the visions articulated by literature. Through an
exploration of works published in the twenty-first century by women
writers from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico, this volume
reconceptualises positions of privilege and power in the region and
provides new readings about the meaning of gender, sexuality, violence
and the female body in contemporary Latin America. The aim of this book
is to raise awareness of the daily threat of violence against women in
Latin America, underline the importance of the voice of Latin American
women within that daily struggle, and encourage governments,
organisations and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean to
take gender violence seriously and fight to secure peace and social
equality for all women in the modern world.
