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A dream of light and shadow: Portraits of Latin American women writers
Book Reviews
285
in Los Angeles, and the three essays on Spanish writers (Cervantes, Lorca, and the Catalan Carme Riera). Inevitably, in a book of this size, which could not avoid controversy even if it wanted to, there are failings: for my taste at any rate, the pull towards an ill-defined ‘theoretical realm is too strong, and sometimes produces a wordiness that the editors might have been tougher with-perhaps ultimately their faith in literature, its centrality and power, is too great. But this is an admirable volume, and I can only hope that there might soon be an equivalent for the Portuguese-speaking world. John Gledson University of Liverpool Agosin, Marjorie (ed.) (1995) A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque). 342 pp. $32.50 hbk. Over the past decade increasing attention has been paid to the work of Latin American women writers, and non-Spanish and Portuguese speaking readers have been introduced to an evergrowing number of poets, novelists and playwrights. Marjorie Agosin has played an important role in this process of putting onto the map the literary works of women previously ignored or not known at all outside their own continent. Her anthology of Latin American women poets, aptly titled These Are Not Sweet Girls appeared in 1994 and brought the poetry of over 50 women, some of whom had never been translated, to English-language readers. A Dream of Light and Shadow continues that line of approach. The volume consists of 16 essays on women writers and an introductory essay by Agosin, that explains the process of selection and her decision of whom to include and exclude. The anthology, she tells us, is a product of her own readings, a subjective interpretation of significant Latin American women. As she points out, she had avoided the chronological approach along with any idea of representation by country, and opted instead for what she describes as women ‘who have forged a destiny and contributed a sense of vision to the cultural landscape of Latin America’. Agosin asks two significant questions: have Latin American women had rooms of their own, and how have they validated their lives and their work on a predominantly male, authoritarian society? The contributors take these questions on board in their essays, and there is a strong sense of personal involvement between essayist and writer discussed. Patricia Varas on Cecilia Ansaldo, Carmen Esteves on Julia de Burgos, Giovanni Pontiero on Clarice Lispector, Janet Gold on Clementina Suarez all demonstrate a strong sense of personal empathy, in keeping with Agosin’s stated intentions. This book will be useful to any reader who wants an introduction to some of the key Latin American women prose writers and poets; contemporaries such as Elena Poniatowska, Marta Traba or Marosa di Giorgio; or earlier figures such as Gabriela Mistral, Delmira Agostini, Alfonsina Storni, Victoria Ocampo, Violeta Parra or Alejandra Pizarnik. Despite the subjective approach of the editor, there are some odd choices: why include Rigoberta Menchit, a marvellous woman but hardly a literary figure in her own right and exclude Claribel Alegria, or Maria Lusia Bombal, about whom Agosin herself has written elsewhere? Some of the writers are extremely well-known, others less so. Some are virtually unknown even in their own contexts. I had never read anything about Marosa di Giorgio, for example, nor about Sofia Ospina de Navarro, and I found both these essays fascinating. Each essay provides biographical details and some account of the principal works of each writer. The essays vary enormously: some are personal and impressionistic, providing little by way of factual material, others are clearly the result of extensive research and contain a lot of detail. This unevenness means that the book should appeal more to general readers than to anyone with an academic interest in Latin American women’s writing. The notes and bibliographies provided vary as considerably as the style of writing: there are 40 notes to the Victoria Ocampo essay, two to the Marta Traba essay and none at all for several others. This would have worried me less if there had been decent bibliographies for each essay, but again there were no bibliographies at all for several writers, which is a lost opportunity. The book would have benefitted from insistence on a standard bibliography for each writer discussed, and this would have helped student readers or anyone else for that matter wanting to pursue further
286
Book Reviews
reading. I was left in the end disappointed that my appetite had been whetted, but I had no easy means of following up my enthusiasms by going straight to the source texts. I never thought the day would come when I would ask for more scholarly rigour to counterbalance passionate enthusiasm, but this book made me realise that indeed that day is here. Susan Bassnett University of Warwick Halperin Donghi, Tulio, JaksiC, Ivan, Kirkpatrick, Gwen, and Masiello, Francine (eds) (1994), Sarmiento, Author of a Nation, University of California Press (Berkeley). x + 398~~. $50.00 hbk, $20.00 pbk. Author of a Nation may be an epithet hard to live up to, but Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) is a candidate worthy of the accolade. Sarmiento is one of the titanic Romantic figures of 19th-century Latin America. Politician, soldier, exile, autodidact, educator, campaigning journalist, writer and chronicler, and eventually President of his country, Sarmiento personified the Romantic protagonist in history in which he saw himself not so much as an individual, but as the inventor of a new political reality, forger of a new destiny for his country. This destiny was to be modelled on the standards of post-enlightenment Europe, values of democracy and egalitarianism, education and the civilised conduct of city life. It was a society posited in contrast to the wild and violent ways of the gaucho and caudillo, the ‘barbarism’ of the vast pampas. It is this famous binarism, civilisation versus barbarism, that forms the main thesis of Sarmiento’s most famous and seminal literary work, Facundo (1845). As is inevitable, Facundo receives plenty of attention in this excellent volume, but the scope and range of the essays do considerable justice to Sarmiento’s prodigious achievement in politics and letters, The book is divided into three sections. Part 1, ‘Sarmiento in Historical Context’, situates the republican Sarmiento’s role in post-revolutionary Argentina. Halperin Donghi explores the ways in which Sarmiento’s self-perception as writer and teacher comes to inform his political vision. Ivan Jaksii: evaluates the influence on Sarmiento of his early experiences as a journalist and educator in Chile. Essays by Natalio Botana and Roberto Cartes Conde focus on Sarmiento’s views on race, community and nationhood, and his conception of national order and identity as keys to the post-independence quest for economic stability. Part 2 is entitled ‘The Writing Systems of Sarmiento’. These essays examine the interaction of literature, history and ideology in Sarmiento’s work, and concentrate in the main on Fucundo and the autobiographical writings, with essays by Nol Jitrik, Ricardo Piglia, Jaime Concha, and David Vifias. Part 3 is ‘Sarmiento: His Models and Reception’. This section examines aspects of Sarmiento’s legacy, with interpretations of the literary and ideological paradigms he inspired. Adolf0 Prieto looks at how Sarmiento’s self-image is presented in his early journalism, whilst Elizabeth Garrells investigates his views on women’s education, Further essays in this section by Marta MorelloFrosch, Diana Sorenson Goodrich, and Nicolas Shumway analyse Sarmiento’s deep and lasting influence on modern Argentine, and indeed Latin American, literature. Most of the essays are the fruits of a centennial conference on Sarmiento at Berkeley in 1988, but also included are some important earlier, ‘classic’ (p. viii) essays from as far back as 1977. These are the contributions from Ana Maria Barrenechea on the Buenos Aires/Cordoba duality and Beatriz Sarlo on in Sarmiento’s works; William Katra on Viajes; Carlos Altamirano Sarmiento’s autobiographical strategies in Recuerdos de provincia; Noir Jitrik’s textual analysis of Facundo; Sylvia Molloy on Sarmiento’s presentation of self and history in autobiography; Sylvia Molloy on Sarmiento’s exploration of Facundo as a ‘master fable’ in Latin American narrative; and Marina Kaplan’s study of the Facundo in the tradition of the romance. It is a most justifiable extension which makes the book all the more useful, as well as epitomising the spirit of a continuing critical dialectic in Sarmiento studies that the collection seeks to promote. This is an impressive volume in its range and scholarly depth, and is prefaced by an excellent introductory essay by Francine Masiello and Gwen Kirkpatrick. Frank McQuade Leeds
285
in Los Angeles, and the three essays on Spanish writers (Cervantes, Lorca, and the Catalan Carme Riera). Inevitably, in a book of this size, which could not avoid controversy even if it wanted to, there are failings: for my taste at any rate, the pull towards an ill-defined ‘theoretical realm is too strong, and sometimes produces a wordiness that the editors might have been tougher with-perhaps ultimately their faith in literature, its centrality and power, is too great. But this is an admirable volume, and I can only hope that there might soon be an equivalent for the Portuguese-speaking world. John Gledson University of Liverpool Agosin, Marjorie (ed.) (1995) A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque). 342 pp. $32.50 hbk. Over the past decade increasing attention has been paid to the work of Latin American women writers, and non-Spanish and Portuguese speaking readers have been introduced to an evergrowing number of poets, novelists and playwrights. Marjorie Agosin has played an important role in this process of putting onto the map the literary works of women previously ignored or not known at all outside their own continent. Her anthology of Latin American women poets, aptly titled These Are Not Sweet Girls appeared in 1994 and brought the poetry of over 50 women, some of whom had never been translated, to English-language readers. A Dream of Light and Shadow continues that line of approach. The volume consists of 16 essays on women writers and an introductory essay by Agosin, that explains the process of selection and her decision of whom to include and exclude. The anthology, she tells us, is a product of her own readings, a subjective interpretation of significant Latin American women. As she points out, she had avoided the chronological approach along with any idea of representation by country, and opted instead for what she describes as women ‘who have forged a destiny and contributed a sense of vision to the cultural landscape of Latin America’. Agosin asks two significant questions: have Latin American women had rooms of their own, and how have they validated their lives and their work on a predominantly male, authoritarian society? The contributors take these questions on board in their essays, and there is a strong sense of personal involvement between essayist and writer discussed. Patricia Varas on Cecilia Ansaldo, Carmen Esteves on Julia de Burgos, Giovanni Pontiero on Clarice Lispector, Janet Gold on Clementina Suarez all demonstrate a strong sense of personal empathy, in keeping with Agosin’s stated intentions. This book will be useful to any reader who wants an introduction to some of the key Latin American women prose writers and poets; contemporaries such as Elena Poniatowska, Marta Traba or Marosa di Giorgio; or earlier figures such as Gabriela Mistral, Delmira Agostini, Alfonsina Storni, Victoria Ocampo, Violeta Parra or Alejandra Pizarnik. Despite the subjective approach of the editor, there are some odd choices: why include Rigoberta Menchit, a marvellous woman but hardly a literary figure in her own right and exclude Claribel Alegria, or Maria Lusia Bombal, about whom Agosin herself has written elsewhere? Some of the writers are extremely well-known, others less so. Some are virtually unknown even in their own contexts. I had never read anything about Marosa di Giorgio, for example, nor about Sofia Ospina de Navarro, and I found both these essays fascinating. Each essay provides biographical details and some account of the principal works of each writer. The essays vary enormously: some are personal and impressionistic, providing little by way of factual material, others are clearly the result of extensive research and contain a lot of detail. This unevenness means that the book should appeal more to general readers than to anyone with an academic interest in Latin American women’s writing. The notes and bibliographies provided vary as considerably as the style of writing: there are 40 notes to the Victoria Ocampo essay, two to the Marta Traba essay and none at all for several others. This would have worried me less if there had been decent bibliographies for each essay, but again there were no bibliographies at all for several writers, which is a lost opportunity. The book would have benefitted from insistence on a standard bibliography for each writer discussed, and this would have helped student readers or anyone else for that matter wanting to pursue further
286
Book Reviews
reading. I was left in the end disappointed that my appetite had been whetted, but I had no easy means of following up my enthusiasms by going straight to the source texts. I never thought the day would come when I would ask for more scholarly rigour to counterbalance passionate enthusiasm, but this book made me realise that indeed that day is here. Susan Bassnett University of Warwick Halperin Donghi, Tulio, JaksiC, Ivan, Kirkpatrick, Gwen, and Masiello, Francine (eds) (1994), Sarmiento, Author of a Nation, University of California Press (Berkeley). x + 398~~. $50.00 hbk, $20.00 pbk. Author of a Nation may be an epithet hard to live up to, but Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) is a candidate worthy of the accolade. Sarmiento is one of the titanic Romantic figures of 19th-century Latin America. Politician, soldier, exile, autodidact, educator, campaigning journalist, writer and chronicler, and eventually President of his country, Sarmiento personified the Romantic protagonist in history in which he saw himself not so much as an individual, but as the inventor of a new political reality, forger of a new destiny for his country. This destiny was to be modelled on the standards of post-enlightenment Europe, values of democracy and egalitarianism, education and the civilised conduct of city life. It was a society posited in contrast to the wild and violent ways of the gaucho and caudillo, the ‘barbarism’ of the vast pampas. It is this famous binarism, civilisation versus barbarism, that forms the main thesis of Sarmiento’s most famous and seminal literary work, Facundo (1845). As is inevitable, Facundo receives plenty of attention in this excellent volume, but the scope and range of the essays do considerable justice to Sarmiento’s prodigious achievement in politics and letters, The book is divided into three sections. Part 1, ‘Sarmiento in Historical Context’, situates the republican Sarmiento’s role in post-revolutionary Argentina. Halperin Donghi explores the ways in which Sarmiento’s self-perception as writer and teacher comes to inform his political vision. Ivan Jaksii: evaluates the influence on Sarmiento of his early experiences as a journalist and educator in Chile. Essays by Natalio Botana and Roberto Cartes Conde focus on Sarmiento’s views on race, community and nationhood, and his conception of national order and identity as keys to the post-independence quest for economic stability. Part 2 is entitled ‘The Writing Systems of Sarmiento’. These essays examine the interaction of literature, history and ideology in Sarmiento’s work, and concentrate in the main on Fucundo and the autobiographical writings, with essays by Nol Jitrik, Ricardo Piglia, Jaime Concha, and David Vifias. Part 3 is ‘Sarmiento: His Models and Reception’. This section examines aspects of Sarmiento’s legacy, with interpretations of the literary and ideological paradigms he inspired. Adolf0 Prieto looks at how Sarmiento’s self-image is presented in his early journalism, whilst Elizabeth Garrells investigates his views on women’s education, Further essays in this section by Marta MorelloFrosch, Diana Sorenson Goodrich, and Nicolas Shumway analyse Sarmiento’s deep and lasting influence on modern Argentine, and indeed Latin American, literature. Most of the essays are the fruits of a centennial conference on Sarmiento at Berkeley in 1988, but also included are some important earlier, ‘classic’ (p. viii) essays from as far back as 1977. These are the contributions from Ana Maria Barrenechea on the Buenos Aires/Cordoba duality and Beatriz Sarlo on in Sarmiento’s works; William Katra on Viajes; Carlos Altamirano Sarmiento’s autobiographical strategies in Recuerdos de provincia; Noir Jitrik’s textual analysis of Facundo; Sylvia Molloy on Sarmiento’s presentation of self and history in autobiography; Sylvia Molloy on Sarmiento’s exploration of Facundo as a ‘master fable’ in Latin American narrative; and Marina Kaplan’s study of the Facundo in the tradition of the romance. It is a most justifiable extension which makes the book all the more useful, as well as epitomising the spirit of a continuing critical dialectic in Sarmiento studies that the collection seeks to promote. This is an impressive volume in its range and scholarly depth, and is prefaced by an excellent introductory essay by Francine Masiello and Gwen Kirkpatrick. Frank McQuade Leeds