Landscapes of a New Land: Short Fiction by Latin American Women.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Landscapes of a New Land is a welcome addition to the growing number of anthologies of works by Latin American women. Chilean critic Marjorie Agosin includes in her collection twenty-two women writers from a variety of countries. Some, such as Brazilian Clarice Lispector, Chilean Maria Luisa Bombal and Argentine Luisa Valenzuela, have won international acclaim, while others are virtually unknown outside their native lands.

With a few brilliant, isolated exceptions, Latin America produced few women writers prior to the twentieth century. The thirties and forties saw a marked increase in writing by women, as novelists such as Marta Brunet, Maria Luisa Bombal, Silvina Ocampo, and Clarice Lispector achieved success with technically and thematically innovative new works. Since the seventies, there has been a veritable explosion of fiction by women, as well as a renewed interest in the previous generation. Agosin attempts to explain the first of these developments in her introduction: ". . . with the advent of authoritarian governments in latin America, women have left the private spaces of house, church, and marketplace to begin to poeticize their experiences through the written word that had previously been denied to them." The explanation falls short, since authoritarianism is certainly not new to Latin America, while the burgeoning of writing by women is. Nevertheless, Agosin is right to call attention to this important phenomenon. Although she has included several representatives of the older generation in her anthology, her emphasis is on the younger writers, most of whom were born in the late thirties or forties.

The stories cover diverse topics, from marriage to politics, from children to intellectual ennui. Several are stylistically experimental, employing techniques associated with the New Narrative. Many explore in one way or another male-dominated Latin culture. One of the most mordant is Brazilian Nelida Pinon's "I Love my Husband," a cynical portrait of marriage among the bourgeoisie. Reduced to an accessory in her husband's life, yet expected to feel grateful for the privilege of serving him the protagonist betrays a...