Search

The Gothic conceit of American womanhood as a nightmarish form of perennial childhood assumes new layers of meaning when viewed in transnational perspective. Haunting portrayals of infantilized women-children give canonical American works like Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' an unlikely kinship with postcolonial texts like Paz's La hija de Rappaccini and Césaire's Une tempête. While echoing Gilman's critique of patriarchal superstructures, Paz and Césaire also confront white women's role in upholding systems of white supremacy, slavery, and (neo-)imperialism. Taken together, Gilman, Paz, and Césaire speak to the shifting significations and the staying power of unending Gothic girlhoods in transnational American literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the erosion of the Latin American novel's power to forge a national identity by examining the fiction of the Nicaraguan novelist and politician Sergio Ramírez. In Ramírez's novel Sombras nada más techniques stemming from the Boom coexist with chapters typical of Latin American Testimonio narrative. Ramírez's effort to incorporate Testimonio voices into a Boom-like novel is read as a last-ditch attempt to rehabilitate a nationalist discourse originating in Sandinismo in the face of his own awareness of the futility of this task in the post-1990 cultural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characterizes Cuban writer Nicolas Guillen's adoption of the epistle form to convey strong nationalist sentiments accentuated by an exile-provoked nostalgia in which nature and food figure as prominent metonyms. Exploration of the issue of identity in Spanish-American literature; Use of words that reflect the poeple and culture of Cuba; Influence of Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario on Guillen's work.