Contemporary Women Writers Research Articles

Writing and the Revolution: Venezuelan Metafiction 2004–2012 by Katie Brown

MLR, .,   Spain. Chapters  and  are, in my opinion, the most interesting as they focus on the writers’ public personas and responses to the issue of women’s writing. ese chapters chronicle the development of female authors, from a cautious Matute to an ambivalent Montero, and finally to the explicitly feminist Etxebarría. Oaknín’s examination of women’s writing and its publication leads to questions concerning marketing and critical reception. ese issues are addressed with the input of the critics Christine Henseler and Laura Freixas. Both Henseler and Freixas criticize the influence of the publishing industry on female writers who, it is argued, have faced gender-specific obstacles while attempting to represent themselves publicly. Oaknín provides strong evidence of gender bias in the promotion and reception of women’s writing in Spain and examines how such bias affects the construction of their public personas. In relation to discriminatory marketing strategies, she argues convincingly that ‘although there is a widespread perception that Western women writers are now living in a post-feminist era of unprecedented opportunities, the traditional sexist stereotypes not only persist, but recur’ (p. ). Oaknín’s study is further characterized by a valuable contextualization of discourses around the legitimacy of the idea of ‘women’s writing’ in present times, when the concepts of women/men and sex/gender are being renegotiated. However, the matrilinear writing that the author projects seems to overlook a fundamental time in the literary history of Spanish women writers, a time that can be considered a starting point. I refer to the writers of the first feminist movement, the ‘liceómanas’. e identities of these writers were concealed behind the names of their male partners (this happened with María Lejárraga, for example), forgotten by the patrilinear literary canon, and/or exiled by the hegemonic patriarchal view of literary production (as was the case with Elena Fortún and others). e liceómanas were the mothers of Matute’s generation of female authors and serve as a stark reminder of the risks taken by non-conforming women in Spain and beyond. us, exploration of the origins of Spanish women’s writings would have shed light on Matute’s cautiousness, Montero’s ambivalence, and Etxebarria’s explicitness. Oaknín’s study might also have benefited from additional exploration of Spain’s most prolific contemporary women writers, who symbolize the prevalence of feminist voices nationally and internationally in the wake of the ‘Me Too’ movement. It would be enriching if future research were to expand on Oaknín’s study by analysing the question of women’s writing through the lens of the social media and their use by contemporary writers. Overall, however, this is a valuable contribution to the field which should be of interest to students and scholars alike. M U M C A Writing and the Revolution: Venezuelan Metafiction –. By K B. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. . x+ pp. £. ISBN –– ––. In anglophone academia, contemporary Venezuelan literature is almost entirely invisible . is is not due to a lack of literary quality or prolific production, but rather  Reviews to the particular national landscape created by the Venezuelan petrostate’s political and cultural apparatus. Katie Brown’s monograph explores the intrinsic aesthetic value of literature; how it can be instrumentalized to serve political purposes; and the impact that said instrumentalization has on literary production, access to markets, as well as the creative autonomy and artistic integrity of Venezuelan writers. Brown outlines how, during the Puntofijo period (–), the state-funded professionalization of writing (p. ), literary publishing houses, and promotion ‘gave writers the economic freedom to be creative’ (p. ), producing experimental literature that did not need to cater to international markets (pp. –). Brown asserts that this partially explains the absence of Venezuelan writers from the Latin American Boom (pp. , ). e election of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in  inaugurated a new era for culture in Venezuela (p. ): the state’s cultural institutions were put at the service of the Bolivarian Revolution’s ideological project, with a vision of literature grounded in ‘nationalism, socialism, democratisation of literature, and writing as a way of documenting and transferring information rather...

Activistes féministes: Francophone Women Writers and International Human Rights

Several prominent contemporary Francophone women writers have embraced activism in compelling forms. In her written creations, Maïssa Bey from Algeria has continually called attention to the lack of women’s rights in her homeland; she has also initiated writing workshops for women to reflect and express themselves. Fatou Diome, who left Senegal for Strasbourg, has shed light in her work on racism and sexism that African immigrants often face in Europe, and she has created an association in her homeland to help individuals become financially solvent. Yanick Lahens from Haiti has similarly devoted herself to activist endeavours on her island, including co-founding a library and working with youth after the earthquake. As these authors seek to create compassion through writing, they also promote empathy through their engagement outside the text, empowering people of various backgrounds by providing them with literacy skills, business acumen, and a sense that their story matters.

Examining the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness in the Select Fiction of Contemporary North East Women Writers

An interesting development in the literary world in India in the last few decades is the emergence of writings in English from the North East. This development is simultaneously accompanied with a growing interest in the region’s writings and its people especially from mainland India. It is also noteworthy that many of the contemporary writers contributing to this nascent literary tradition are women. While the quality of any writing cannot be overshadowed or judged by gender, it is irrefutable that women write from a position where their gender often dictates their experiences. For contemporary women writers of the North East, their narratives, seated in the vehicle of fiction, become a revelation on the gendered experiences of women from the region whose issues, concerns and problems are often shrouded in a cloud of mystery and exoticized by the outside world. The paper seeks to examine the select fiction of women writers from the region and state that there is a discernible feminist consciousness that is emerging; identifying these feminist markers in their fiction allows the silenced voices of women to be heard and their growing boldness to claim a dignified existence in the midst of convoluted geo-politics that have irrevocably scarred the region.

Мифопоэтическая структура книги Елены Шварц «Литературные гастроли»

This paper analyses Helena Shvarts’s book of short stories Literary Tours (2000), the origin and functional patterns of mythopoetic intertexts there in the paradigm of specific Russian Women’s fiction in the context of postmodern ethics and aesthetics: like other contemporary women-writers, Shvarts utilizes intertextuality and myths, biblical symbols and cultural code to be recognized by attentive readers. Fiction and non-fiction are overlapped in these memoirs which is typical of Russian Women’s writing as well, so episodes from the author’s own biography could be a fruitful soil for investigation the Myth as it is, in which oriental and western traditions and philosophies are intertwined. In Helena Shvarts’s poetic conception of the world a cross-cultural dialog between different types of civilizations (East and West) or/and archaic resources of modern European mentality had always been a fundamental basis of the narrative. Literary Tours represents a multileveled cultural utopia, in which Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Scandinavian and Taoist myths not only coexist peacefully in consciousness of a Poet as a representative of Gods, but also have an influence on the modern reality.

Not So Little Literatures: Reading Barbara Honigmann With (and Against) Deleuze and Guattari

Although a number of critics have applied the term ‘minor literature’ to the German Jewish writer Barbara Honigmann, this article proceeds on the assumption that the last word may not have been spoken on how it might be possible and desirable to apply Deleuze and Guattari to that author. In it, I extend the discourse established by Deleuze and Guattari beyond the colonial context and apply it to Barbara Honigmann in her capacity as a Jewish writer. This also involves reading what Honigmann writes about three other Jewish women writers both in the light of, and as a critique of, that Deleuze-Guattarian discourse, occasionally going back to Kafka in the process. And the conclusion is that, while Deleuze and Guattari can prove useful in drawing attention to certain traits of literatures produced by members of minorities writing as such, the dangers involved in trying to reclaim pejorative sobriquets remain incalculable, and that terms such as ‘minor literature’ are therefore probably best avoided when discussing major authors like Barbara Honigmann. Tweetable Abstract: In what sense can Jewish women writers be called ‘minor’? Robert Gillett explores this question with reference to Barbara Honigmann, a justly celebrated contemporary German Jewish woman writer, and in sometimes lively debate with Deleuze and Guattari on Kafka.

Webs and Threads and Shirts of Destiny: Textile Imagery and the Aesthetics of Transmission in Barbara Honigmann’s Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben (2004) and Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014)

Daughter narrators in autobiographical and autofictional texts by contemporary Jewish women writers such as Barbara Honigmann and Katja Petrowskaja employ textile imagery to overcome traumatic ruptures and losses of tradition. The history of (Jewish) embroidery and needlework in general is being evoked and alluded to in their literary texts, often via the character of the grandmother. The act of translation from cultural technique to literary text enables the writers to reconnect with Jewish and female artistic traditions, establishing new transnational genealogies of female artistic creation. Honigmann’s own female and Jewish version of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s ‘minor literature’ and Natalia Ginzburg’s concept of a poetry of ‘nothing much’ advocate a commitment to a poetics of the domestic and the seemingly trivial with a decidedly subversive edge. Both aesthetic approaches turn exclusion from male genealogies of literary and religious authority into a strength, asking questions about truth, memory, belonging and the problem of both traumatic and cultural inheritance. Tweetable Abstract: The use of textile and domestic imagery in the literature of contemporary Jewish women authors serves as a strategy to overcome genealogical and traumatic ruptures.

‘Pens that confound the label of citizenship’: self-translations and literary identities

The linguistic and cultural identity of transnational writers who choose to write in an adopted language or to self-translate, has gained increasing interest among researchers over the last decade. Approaches to the topic have ranged from textual analyses of translingual narratives and language memoirs to more ontological investigations of the processes of identity-formation in transcultural frameworks. Acknowledging that there is no one-to-one correspondence between linguistic units and ethnic, social or cultural formations, this paper considers the relationship between the literary practices of contemporary translingual writers and the role of language both in the formation of personal identities and in the reconfiguration of constructions of national identity and literary belonging. Specifically, I examine how two contemporary women writers, Francesca Marciano and Jhumpa Lahiri, who each represent a remarkable case of self-conscious linguistic transformation, interrogate the traditional construct of a monolingual, mono-ethnic and mono-cultural national identity. I argue that their autofictions reflect the multilingual and transcultural reality of contemporary transnational literature and instantiate broader issues connected with the definition, categorisation and consequent evaluation of literary canons and literary citizenship.

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters by Fiona Cox

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters by Fiona Cox

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters by Fiona Cox

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters by Fiona Cox

De l’irrationnel à l’irr(el)ationnel. Perspectives sociopoétiques du féminin et du posthumain chez trois auteures contemporaines (Castillon, Martinez, NDiaye)

This article examines representations and issues of the "irrational" in recent novels by contemporary women writers in French (Claire Castillon, Carole Martinez and Marie NDiaye). It examines how the irrational imaginary specific to these works, which is built up through the sensitivity of female characters, raises issues that concern not only the affective construction of the protagonists but also the social identification, the relations of human-beings and the hierarchy of powers. Specific implications of the irrational regarding gendered hierarchy and affecting women in particular are discussed. The analysis shows how the irrational is constructed as the transformation of a traumatic social experience of the protagonists.

Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters, by Fiona Cox

<i>Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Writing: Strange Monsters</i>, by Fiona Cox

Women writers and the fictionalisation of the classics

ABSTRACTTranslation studies scholars have traditionally studied texts that are called translations in the receiving cultures. But in the age of mass media, blogs, online journals, reader reviews, and fan fiction, the latest generation has taken translation to a new stage. Linguistic accuracy, once the primary criterion for analysis, recedes in importance; creativity and innovation are valued, and social and political factors move to the fore. This paper discusses the gender politics of such a movement. In my book Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies (2017), I looked at film, theatre, and music adaptations, focusing on how rewritings can effect social change. This essay turns to the fictionalisation of classical texts by contemporary women writers, including Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, and Madeline Miller. I suggest that translation scholars be open to new forms being introduced by such women writers and focus on more social arena where political change is already underway.

‘In defence of chick-lit’: refashioning feminine subjectivities in Ugandan and South African contemporary women’s writing

Ugandan and South African contemporary women’s narratives reflect on the rapid pace of change in the social lives of women in two countries that are contending with the aftermath of conflict and violence. This article will interrogate how contemporary women writers such as Goretti Kyomuhendo ( Whispers from Vera), Zukiswa Wanner ( The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man) and Cynthia Jele ( Happiness is a Four-Letter Word) are embracing chick-lit as a form of writing, while simultaneously short-circuiting this genre to create an experimental form that allows them to reflect on the realities of women and engage with the contradictions, complexities and ambiguities of contemporary feminine subjectivities. Although chick-lit as a genre has been dismissed as trivial and frivolous, ostensibly because it deals with women’s experiences, this article argues that this particular form of chick-lit is more political and attempts to disrupt the original chick-lit by offering a critique of society. It articulates how women see themselves and their relationships with their parents, spouses and, most importantly, female friends; reflects on the challenges that modern women face in the work environment; interrogates women’s realities concerning love, marriage and motherhood; explores concepts of sexual desire and intimacy; and negotiates the dilemmas of a patriarchal society, while also confronting issues of class and race. These contemporary women writers are adopting this genre because it allows them to reflect on realities that are complex and uncertain, to transform gender relations, to redefine the roles of women and to construct new feminine subjectivities.

Unreal Homes: Belonging and Becoming in Indian Women Narratives

In an epoch which has to do fundamentally with space, the concept of home has entered the epistemic scene, both as a commodity and a discursive formation. Contemporary Indian women writers, who are a major facet of present Anglophone literature, have often chosen the domestic sphere as the structural framework of their stories. However, despite the traditional idea of home as a static physical site where women’s lives unfold, a more complex and fluid concept emerges from their narratives. After discussing conflicting definitions of home both as a site of belonging and becoming, I will provide a comparative analysis of the short story Mrs. Sen’s by Jhumpa Lahiri and the novel Ladies’ Coupé by Anita Nair. By looking at the transitional spaces inhabited by the women protagonists—respectively, the diasporic space in the U.S. and a train car in India—I will show how home is a psychic-inhabited place taking shape in memory, imagination, and desire. In conclusion, home is an unreal site at the core of women’s subjectivities, transcending the physicality of the homeland or the household and assuming a metonymic significance. Its inward or outward-moving force gives birth to “homeworlds” made of liminal paths where new possibilities of identity construction are produced.

Female voices in translation: an interrogation of a dynamic translation decade for contemporary Chinese women writers, 1980–1991

ABSTRACTContemporary Chinese women writers have long been underrepresented in English translation. However, they received considerable attention from Anglophone publishers during the 1980s. Such a dynamic translation scene was prompted by an upsurge of female writers in China after 1978, when political restrictions on literature were loosened, and an increased interest on the part of Western feminists in female experience from different ethnicities. This article adopts Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to analyse the selection and paratextual strategies adopted by two categories of translation agents: the dominant Anglophone publishers and the subversive feminist translators. It argues that Anglophone publishers were governed by a dominant political translation discourse that resulted from a dual patriarchal control: the Chinese nationalist agenda imposed on the writers’ feminist preoccupations and the predilection of Western ideology for the politics of China. This seemingly thriving translation turn for Chinese women writers was in fact still subject to a voyeuristic gaze that positioned China as the subaltern other. It was women translators who maintained a subversive position against the orthodox translation discourse, thus contributing to what could be called a predominantly feminist translation era for contemporary Chinese women writers.

Introduction: Brigid Brophy

An introduction to the special issue of Contemporary Women's Writing on the author Brigid Brophy.

Notes on Contributors

Journal Article Notes on Contributors Get access Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 12, Issue 1, March 2018, Pages 134–135, https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpy010 Published: 09 April 2018

Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique

Building on the pioneering work of Ellen Friedman and Miriam Fuchs in Breaking the Sequence (1989), Ellen Berry’s new book examines the work of contemporary women writers, Kathy Acker, Chantal Chawaf, Lynda Barry, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Valerie Solanas, and Jeanette Winterson, suggesting that each deploys a deliberate strategy of “literary negation” (1) in their “negative aesthetic texts” (5). Berry argues that all six writers, in different ways, challenge the “normative structures of perception and representation” by presenting “extreme content” by means of “formally radical techniques” (5). Positioning her arguments in the intellectual contexts of the most recent development in critical theory, namely, the “negative or anti-social turn” of queer studies (8), Berry marshals the work of Lee Edelman, Heather Love, and, in particular, Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure (2011), suggesting that a new feminist critique should follow the insights of queer theory and recognize unconstructive affects such as negativity, shame, and unhappiness as an important part of what Halberstam calls “shadow feminism.” Such a model allows us, suggests Berry, to examine these writers’ refusal of realist form in relation to their focus on failure, negation, and even extreme violence and, further, to understand why the renunciation of redemption and happiness might be regarded as part of a new feminist politics.

Notes on Contributors

Journal Article Notes on Contributors Get access Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 11, Issue 2, July 2017, Pages 288–289, https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpx023 Published: 11 August 2017

Notes on contributors

Journal Article Notes on contributors Get access Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 March 2017, Pages 135–136, https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpx003 Published: 16 March 2017