A Dream of Light & Shadow

Book excerpt: Sixteen original essays on women writers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil are gathered in this book. Each establishes the relationship between the biography of the subject and her literary production. Some of these writers, like Nobel Prize-winner Gabriela Mistral, Elena Poniatowska, and Victoria Ocampo, are well known; others are still largely undiscovered. All of them defy the limits imposed upon them by society, and all have been able to find freedom through creative imagination. All the writers included here are vitally concerned with the problems women face in Latin America. Children and mothers are the central focus of their lives and of many of their writings. These writers have participated in essential ways in the history of their respective countries and in the intellectual history of Latin America, and at the same time, their greatest contribution has been in the sharing of the private details of personal stories, their own and others. In the strong connections that many of them have had with each other, Marjorie Agosin sees a culture of sisterhood.