There is a wealth of published literature in English by Latin American women writers, but such material can be difficult to locate due to the lack of available bibliographic resources. In addition, the various types of published narrative (short stories, novels, novellas, autobiographies, and biographies) by Latin American women writers has increased significantly in the last ten to fifteen years. To address the lack of bibliographic resources, Kathy Leonard has compiled Latin American Women Writers: A Resource Guide to Titles in English. This reference includes all forms of narrative-short story, autobiography, novel, novel excerpt, and others-by Latin American women dating from 1898 to 2007. More than 3,000 individual titles are included by more than 500 authors. This includes nearly 200 anthologies, more than 100 autobiographies/biographies or other narrative, and almost 250 novels written by more than 100 authors from 16 different countries. For the purposes of this bibliography, authors who were born in Latin America and either continue to live there or have immigrated to the United States are included. Also, titles of pieces are listed as originally written, in either Spanish or Portuguese. If the book was originally written in English, a phrase to that effect is included, to better reflect the linguistic diversity of narrative currently being published. This volume contains seven indexes: Authors by Country of Origin, Authors/Titles of Work, Titles of Work/Authors, Autobiographies/Biographies and Other Narrative, Anthologies, Novels and Novellas in Alphabetical Order by Author, and Novels and Novellas by Authors' Country of Origin. Reflecting the increase in literary production and the facilitation of materials, this volume contains a comprehensive listing of narrative pieces in English by Latin American women writers not found in any other single volume currently on the market. This work of reference will be of special interest to scholars, students, and instructors interested in narrative works in English by Latin American women authors. It will also help expose new generations of readers to the highly creative and diverse literature being produced by these writers.

This book surveys Latin American and Caribbean women's contributions throughout history from conquest through the 20th century. From the colonial period to the present day, women across the Caribbean and Latin America were an intrinsic part of the advancement of society and helped determine the course of history. Women's Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean highlights their varied and important roles over five centuries of time, providing geographical breadth and ethnic diversity to the Women's Roles through History series. Women's roles are the focus of all six chapters, covering themes that include religion, family, law, politics, culture, and labor. Each section provides specific examples of real-life women throughout history, providing readers with an overview of Latin American women's history that pays special attention to continuity across regions and variances over time and geography.

In Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text, Yugar invites you to accompany Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century protofeminist and ecofeminist, on her lifelong journey within three communities of women in the Americas. Sor Juana's goal was to reconcile inequalities between men and women in central Mexico and between the Spaniards and the indigenous Nahua population of New Spain. Yugar reconstructs a her-story narrative through analysis of two primary texts Sor Juana wrote en sus propias palabras (in her own words), El Sueno (The Dream) and La Respuesta (The Answer). Yugar creates a historically-based narrative in which Sor Juana's sueno of a more just world becomes a living nightmare haunted by misogyny in the form of the church, the Spanish Tribunal, Jesuits, and more--all seeking her destruction. In the process, Sor Juana "hoists [them] with their own petard." In seventeenth-century colonial Mexico, just as her Latina sisters in the Americas are doing today, Sor Juana used her pluma (pen) to create counternarratives in which the wisdom of women and the Nahua inform her sueno of a more just world for all.

Murder, street brawls, marital squabbles, infidelity, official corruption, public insults, and rebellion are just a few of the social layers Reuben Zahler investigates as he studies the dramatic shifts in Venezuela as it transformed from a Spanish colony to a modern republic. His book Ambitious Rebels illuminates the enormous changes in honor, law, and political culture that occurred and how ordinary men and women promoted or rejected those changes. In a highly engaging style, Zahler examines gender and class against the backdrop of Venezuelan institutions and culture during the late colonial period through post-independence (known as the “middle period”). His fine-grained analysis shows that liberal ideals permeated the elite and popular classes to a substantial degree while Venezuelan institutions enjoyed impressive levels of success. Showing remarkable ambition, Venezuela’s leaders aspired to transform a colony that adhered to the king, the church, and tradition into a liberal republic with minimal state intervention, a capitalistic economy, freedom of expression and religion, and an elected, representative government. Subtle but surprisingly profound changes of a liberal nature occurred, as evidenced by evolving standards of honor, appropriate gender roles, class and race relations, official conduct, courtroom evidence, press coverage, economic behavior, and church-state relations. This analysis of the philosophy of the elites and the daily lives of common men and women reveals in particular the unwritten, unofficial norms that lacked legal sanction but still greatly affected political structures. Relying on extensive archival resources, Zahler focuses on Venezuela but provides a broader perspective on Latin American history. His examination provides a comprehensive look at intellectual exchange across the Atlantic, comparative conditions throughout the Americas, and the tension between traditional norms and new liberal standards in a postcolonial society.

The year 1492 invokes many instances of transition in a variety of ways that intersected, overlapped, and shaped the emergence of Latin America. For the diverse Native inhabitants of the Americas as well as the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific as part of the early-modern global movements, their lived experiences were defined by transitions. The Iberian territories from approximately 1492-1800 extended from what is now the US Southwest to Tierra del Fuego, and from the Iberian coasts to the Philippines and China. Built around six thematic areas that underline key processes that shaped the colonial period and its legacies – space, body, belief systems, literacies, languages, and identities – this innovative volume goes beyond the traditional European understanding of the lettered canon. It examines a range of texts including books published in Europe and the New World and manuscripts stored in repositories around the globe that represent poetry, prose, judicial proceedings, sermons, letters, grammars, and dictionaries.

This book brings together the portraits and autobiographical texts of six 17th-century Latin American women, drawing on primary sources that include Inquisition and canonization records, confessional and mystic journals, and legal defenses and petitions.