Revolutionary Insurgencies, Paradigmatic Cases

doi:10.1017/CHO9781316050859.017

13 - Revolutionary Insurgencies, Paradigmatic Cases

from Part III - Women Writers In-Between: Socialist, Modern, Developmentalists, and Liberal Democratic Ideals

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2015

Parvathi Kumaraswami

Edited by

Ileana Rodríguez and

Mónica Szurmuk

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Ileana Rodríguez: Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Mónica Szurmuk: Affiliation:
Instituto de Literatura Hispanoamericana, Argentina

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Summary

This chapter compares the development of women's writing in two overlapping but distinct revolutionary contexts. One is the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to the present and the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979-1990, privileging work produced within the process of political and social revolution. The Cuban Revolution is most frequently seen outside Cuba as a failed socialist or communist political experiment, often through applying an equally simplified template of Sovietization. Women's incorporation into the literary establishment was cautious and framed in terms of political, rather than cultural, credentials. The initial periods of both revolutions were not without their acrimonious debates, many of which revolved around how to define revolutionary literature in a context in which the majority of the population was now literate, if only in functional terms. Whether in prose or poetry, the testimonial mode was enormously influential: It allowed women who lacked the symbolic and social capitals associated with the world of letters.

Keywords

travel writing Spanish-language journals political press working-class women

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature , pp. 228 - 242

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781316050859.017 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2015

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