31 - Beyond the Book

Summary

This chapter explores some of the modes in recent years in which women writers have transformed the object of the book and thereby have expanded the concept of literature itself. These writers venture beyond the book in narrative experiments that straddle journalism, memoir, and fiction; projects that incorporate photography, performance, and mapping; and alternative bookmaking in precarious situations. Further pushing the boundaries of the book, some writers exploit the Internet in digital interactive works, while others take to the streets in poetic graffiti projects. Latin American writing emerged out of the colonial chronicles whose combination of genres, travel writing, testimony, and official reportage, resurges in more recent writing by women. Women writers integrating photography and other visual media into their verbal texts create the kinds of hybrid works. Cartonera groups consider books a tool for solidarity, a way to draw people together, as well as instruments that foster reading and new writing.