Masquerade and Social Justice in Contemporary Latin American Fiction
Masquerade and Social Justice in Contemporary Latin American Fiction
Contemporary Latin American fiction establishes a unique connection between masquerade, frequently motivated by stigma or trauma, and social justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophy, history, psychology, literature, and social justice theory, this study delineates the synergistic connection between these two themes. Weldt-Basson examines fourteen novels by twelve different Latin American authors: Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Galindo, Augusto Roa Bastos, Fernando del Paso, Mayra Santos-Febres, Isabel Allende, Carmen Boullosa, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Marcela Serrano, Sara Sefchovich, Luisa Valenzuela, and Ariel Dorfman. She elucidates the varieties of social justice operating in the plots of contemporary Latin American novels: distributive, postmodern/feminist, postcolonial, transitional, and historical justices. The author further examines how masquerade and disguise aid in articulating the theme of social justice, why this is important, and how it relates to Latin American history and the historical novel.
This is a fine selection of Latin American Spanish speaking writers.…Masquerade and Social Justice is an excellent contribution to scholarly work in the field of literary criticism.
Helene Carol Weldt-Basson is currently a professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of Subversive Silences: Nonverbal Expressionand Implicit Narrative Strategies in the Works of Latin American Women Writers and Augusto Roa Bastos’s I The Supreme: A Dialogic Perspective. She received an honorary doctorate for her work on Paraguay from the Universidad del Norte in 2012.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Masquerade and Literature
Chapter One. Disguise and Distributive Justice: La comparsa by Sergio Galindo, and El paraíso en la otra esquina and Travesuras de la niña mala by Mario Vargas Llosa
Chapter Two. Postmodern Justice: Ethical Feminism in Isabel Allende’s Hija de la fortuna, Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s Mujer en traje de batalla, Marcela Serrano’s Nuestra señora de la soledad, and Sara Sefchovich’s La señora de los sueños
Chapter Three. Postcolonial Structural Justice: Isabel Allende’s Zorro and Carmen Boullosa’s Duerme
Chapter Four. Allegories of Transitional Justice: Masquerade in Novela negra con argentinos by Luisa Valenzuela and Máscara by Ariel Dorfman
Chapter Five. Historical Justice: Masquerade and Trauma in Augusto Roa Bastos’s El fiscal, Mayra Santos-Febres’s Fe en disfraz, and Fernando del Paso’s Noticias del imperio
Conclusions: Why Study Masquerade?
Notes
Works Cited
Index
