Camila Henríquez Ureña's Feminist Essays and Literary Criticism: The Trajectory of a Transnational Intellectual

Abstract

This article analyzes the essay writing of Camila Henriquez Urena (1894-1973). Despite having actively participated in the intellectual and academic fields of Cuba and the United States, Henriquez Urena’s work has received insufficient critical attention over the last several decades. In order to better comprehend the development of Cuban feminism during the first half of the twentieth century, Henriquez Urena should be recognized as one of the movement’s protagonists; her talks, lectures, and essays motivated feminist organization, and she also assumed a central role in the Tercer Congreso Nacional de Mujeres (Third National Women’s Congress) of 1939. This article focuses on three of her essays—“La mujer y la cultura” (Women and culture), “Feminismo” (Feminism), and “La mujer intelectual y el problema sexual” (The intellectual woman and the sexual problem)—in which Henriquez Urena develops historical perspectives to explain women’s subordination as a cultural construct without biological justification. In addition to discussing how Henriquez Urena’s feminist ideas coincided and differed from those of other Cuban feminists from the era, this analysis addresses her studies of women’s writing, which constitute early manifestations of feminist criticism. The article highlights Henriquez Urena’s commitment to expanding women’s access to education and literature, while making visible the literary production of a woman who has been ignored by male-dominated literary history.