Each of these sonnets, written in the early 30s, is written to a friend, relative or acquaintance of Rosa Chacel's, and is a critical commentary on that person's life circumstances. A prescription for action is containedin the tercets. Included among these are luminaries such as Pablo Neruda and Nikos Kazantzakis. THe sonnets' most unique feature is their deliberatly cryptic nature: each poem is an erudite riddle. without through and ardous investigation of a term's symbolic, intertextual and linguistic complexity, the readers understanding of the sonnets is hindered. This guide decodes their formal complexity, investigating form, imagery, language and themes.

Cobb has translated Sor Juana's seventy Petrarchan (or traditional Spanish) sonnets into Petrarchan sonnets in English, closely following her syntax and phrasing. Follows the numbering, order, and categorization of poems in the standard multi-volume compilation of Sor Juana's writings edited by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte.

This English translation of Alfonsina Storni gives scholars and students in the fields of Latin American literature, womenÆs studies and world theater the opportunity to study rare examples of theater written by a woman on very controversial and progressive issues at the beginning of the twentieth century. The translation is furnished with an introduction that reviews the whole theatrical production of Storni in relation to the historical and social developments of her time and places her work within the context of the literature and theater of Argentina and the Southern Cone.

This thematic study is the only in-depth investigation into the fictional and testimonial literature of Amanda Labarca Hubertson, Chilean educator, reformer, and promoter of women's rights. These imaginary writings include such little-known works as her semi-autobiographical novel, En tierras extranas (1915), the short novel, La lampara maravillosa (1921), the collection of short stories entitled Cuentos a mi senor, the testimonial Meditaciones and Meditaciones breves (1928-1931), and the marginal journal fragments, Desvelos en el alba (1945). A preliminary chapter also addresses the controversy surrounding her published literary thesis, La novela castellana de hoi [sic, 1906]. The study corrects some interpretive errors regarding earlier scholarship on Labarca's perceived feminist writings by examining the sexual (gendered) complexities that imprint themselves in Labarca's fictional work and literary criticism. While she may be criticized for omitting any materialist analysis of power, in her literature Labarca attempted to effect change in the social order by pointing out its contradictions. Paradoxically, a close reading of Labarca's dangerously contradictory and yet amorous

This Bolivian novel chronicles the degeneration of a middle-class land-owning family related to the national Revolution of 1952, agrarian reform and three decades of political repression. Gaby Vallejo intertwines public political abuse with private abuse of females.

Jose Donoso (1924-1996), the most celebrated fiction writer Chile has produced, created over a span of some 50 years, a large and remarkably various body of work. His 10 novels, 9 novellas and 4 volumes of tales take up many of the social and political questions of his day. Although each work probes a different social issue, each contains as well Donoso's lifelong meditation on the nature of the self. Jose Donoso's Conjuring of the Self explores this central theme in Donoso's writings. This study explores in rigorous detail Jose Donoso's most important theme - the perils of establishing a self. Concentrating on the Chilean's late writings - The Garden Next Door, Curfew, Taratuta, Conjeturas sobre la memoria de mi tribu and Donde van a morir los elefantes, the author infers from these little studied narratives Donoso's idiosyncratic views about selfhood. Donoso, who conceived of individual identity as compact of social role and intrapsychic form, fuses his social vision with psychoanalysis.

In this study, Henao considers the ways in which the narratives of Julia lvarez, Rosario Ferr, and Ana Lydia Vega challenge traditional representations of Spanish Caribbean women. She explores the connections these works establish between women's identities and the colonial cultures of Puerto Rico,