Publishers Weekly Points Us to 12 Female Spanish-Language Writers & Poets

Author and professor Cristina Rivera Garza suggests 12 female Spanish-language writers who "defy easy classification" and "all deserve a place in your reading list." Among them, poet Sara Uribe, whose book Antígona González was translated by John Pluecker for Les Figues Press in 2015, and Marosa di Giorgio, whose I Remember Nightfall was published by Ugly Duckling Presse just recently, translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas. "This is but a small selection of the many women writers from the Spanish-speaking world who have ceaselessly questioned the status quo, refusing to comply with gender and other hierarchies," writes Rivera Garza. Another example, from Publishers Weekly:

Rosario Castellanos

 

A writer of multiple talents, Rosario Castellanos (Mexico, 1925-1974) wrote memorable social novels in which modernity cruelly conflated with indigenous Mexico (such as The Book of Lamentations, translated by Esther Allen), as well as satirical poems that demonstrated she was not afraid of laughing at herself. Her “Eternal Feminine,” a theater play included in The Rosario Castellanos Reader, translated by Maureen Ahern for Texas University Press in 1988, is a veritable tour de force. At a beauty parlor, women´s heads remain under sci-fi-like hair dryers as they dream with an alternative history of the world. The murmurs of Eve, La Malinche, or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz contribute to a scathing and relentless subversion of gender stereotypes, transforming the main character forever. A feminist at heart, Castellanos died accidentally while trying to turn on a lamp.