Luisa Valenzuela Summary
Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) was a Chilean poet and educator. Her poetry earned her the Nobel Prize for literature in 1945.Gabriela Mistral was born Lucila Godoy Alcaya on April 6, 1889, at Vicu&ntild... Read more

Biography EssayLuisa Valenzuela is one of the first outstanding Latin-American female authors to enjoy increasing readership and interest in the 1980s. Time and Newsweek have featured articles in wh... Read more

Luisa Valenzuela is one of the first outstanding Latin-American female authors to enjoy increasing readership and interest in the 1980s. Time and Newsweek have featured articles in which Valenzuela's ... Read more

In the following essay, Ainsa considers the transformation in Luisa Valenzuela's work from individual to collective fear and discusses her attempt to overcome fear through writing. Child psy... Read more

Critical Essay by Sharon Magnarelli Unquestionably, one of the most characteristic qualities of Valenzuela's prose is the plurality to which Cortázar has referred [see excerpt above], f... Read more

Critical Essay by Julio Cortazar After a long period during which Argentine literature (and Latin American literature in general) was almost always cast in molds imposed by foreign examples or by int... Read more

Critical Essay by Fimie Richie Considering the political content of several of the twenty-six short stories and of the last segment of the novel included in [Strange Things Happen Here], the present ... Read more

Critical Essay by W. A. Luchting The Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela … is what, after due apologies, still may be called a women's novelist; talkative, impulsive and full of unexpecte... Read more

Critical Essay by Anne Marie Schultheis The Lizard's Tail opens with a narrative stylistically similar to the Benjy section of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Details and shreads of ... Read more

In the following review, Thornton admits that "readers who admire fiction that celebrates its own making will be drawn to Black Novel." Like many contemporary Latin American writers, ... Read more

In the review below, Agosin focuses on the Argentinian themes of Black Novel. Argentine Luisa Valenzuela and Chilean Isabel Allende are Latin America's best known and most widely translated ... Read more

Below, Januzzi offers a favorable review of Black Novel, remarking that "the text is so well constructed that it provides a tight alibi for her sense of language as a secretion." From... Read more

In the essay below, Bach provides an overview of Valenzuela's life and works. Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela has defined her country's origins in terms both violent and lyrical. In... Read more

In the following review, Miller maintains that the "overlapping of military and personal struggles is what makes Bedside Manners so appealing." Luisa Valenzuela's short novel B... Read more

Below, Long finds Strange Things Happen Here "stranger than strange," noting that fear and paranoia permeate the collection. Strange Things Happen Here, a collection of 22 severely br... Read more

In the following review, Hernández comments on Valenzuela's verbal wit, black humor, and the Argentine vision of magic realism in The Lizard's Tail. Carlos Fuentes has hailed L... Read more

In the essay below, Araújo explains the relation between the feminine body and language in terms of the violence and degradation depicted in Other Weapons. The stories, narrations and other ... Read more

In the following review of Open Door, Horvath summarizes the themes and techniques of Valenzuela's short stories. According to Evelyn Picon Garfield, Luisa Valenzuela "has become the ... Read more