Feminine bodies that tell stories: Narratives by Central American women writers

This project examines four specific feminine figures in narrative works by Central American women writers from the 1950s to the present, a corpus of literature currently very understudied in the U.S. academy. Each chapter in the dissertation looks at one of four "master narratives" commonly used to talk about Central American history and identity: development, mestizaje, the patriarchal family, and leftist revolution, through the lenses of different feminine figures or "bodies," respectively the land or nature, the indigenous woman, the mother, and the guerrillera. Using a wide range of narrative texts by women writers (novels, short stories, and testimonios), I argue that the feminine "body" in each of the texts represents a group or entity that is buried or repressed in the master narrative, and that by giving the silenced body a voice, or its own counter-narrative, these writers invest it with the function of a destabilizing force. The texts I analyze are: Barro by Paca Navas de Miralda, "Y cuando las pascuas fueron de sangre" and "La voz que no cesaba de contar" by Isabel Garma, Tierra de infancia by Claudia Lars, Sofia de los presagios, Waslala: Memorial del futuro, La mujer habitada , and El pais bajo nu piel: Memorias de amor y guerra by Gioconda Belli, La loca de Gandoca by Anacristina Rossi, Asalto al paraiso by Tatiana Lobo, La nina blanca y los pajaros sin pies and Siete relatos sobre el amor y la guerra by Rosario Aguilar, "El regreso de las cigarras" by Mercedes Durand, Album familiar by Claribel Alegria, No pertenezco a este siglo by Rosa Maria Britton, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia by Elisabeth Burgos, Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas by Menchu, ¡Yo tambien quiero ser alguien!: Testimonios acerca de la vida de la mujer embera en la Ciudad by Maria Magdalena Ramnek, Sobrepunto by Carmen Naranjo, Corazon ladino by Yolanda C. Martinez, Cenizas de Izalco and No me agarran viva: La mujer salvadorena en lucha by Alegria and D. J. Flakoll, A ras del suelo by Luisa Gonzalez, 49 centavos de felicidad by Maria del Carmen Escobar, Apuntes de una historia de amor que no fue and "La noche de los escritores asesinos" by Jacinta Escudos, and Mujeres en la alborada: Guerrilla y participacion femenina en Guatemala, 1973--1978 by Yolanda Colom.