Remembering Maternal Bodies

Melancholy in Latina and Latin American Women's Writing

B. Trigo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN:
  9781349999675
  9781403964694
• eBook ISBN:
  9781403983381
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Remembering Maternal Bodies is a collection of essays about the writings of several Latina and Latin American women writers who remember their mothers, and/or challenge our commonly held beliefs about motherhood and maternity, in an effort to stop depression and melancholy. It suggests that the widespread violent depression and sometimes suicidal melancholy that haunts our culture and society is the result of a terrible fantasy about the way we become ourselves. This fantasy has a matricide at its core, and this matricide will continue to have its depressing effect on us as long as it remains in place and invisible. The authors showcased in this book make visible this fantasy and change it in their works in an effort to bring us out of our depression and melancholy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Transformative Witnessing: Clarice Lispector’s Dark Ties
• 2 Maternal Jouissance: Elena Garro’s Recuerdos
• 3 The Mother Tongue: Rosario Ferré’s Ec-centric Writing
• 4 Accidents of Chicana Feminisms: Norma Alarcón, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Cherríe Moraga
• 5 Memoirs for the Abject: Irene Vilar’s Memoria
• 6 From Revenge to Redemption: Julia Alvarez’s Open Secrets
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index