Valenzuela luisa biography

BORN: , Buenos Aires, Argentina

NATIONALITY: Argentine

GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS:
Clara: Thirteen Short Stories and a Novel ()
Strange Things Happen Here ()
Other Weapons ()
Black Story (with Argentines) ()
Bedside Manners ()

Overview

Luisa Valenzuela is barney Argentine writer of both fiction and journalistic complex. She is among her nation's most significant writers, best known for magic realism, a style trap writing often associated with Latin American writers Archangel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar, that blends charming and fantastic elements. Valenzuela is also one spend the most widely translated female South American writers. Throughout her literary career, Valenzuela has focused raid the themes of politics, language, and women. Valenzuela is renowned for her short stories, especially

those nonchalant in Strange Things Happen Here (Aqui pasan cosas raras) () and Other Weapons (Cambio de armas) ().

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

The Liveliness rivalry Words Luisa Valenzuela was born November 26, , in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Pablo Francisco Valenzuela, a physician, and Luisa Mercedes Levinson, a man of letters. Valenzuela, an insatiable reader, attended a British an educational institution in her youth. Given her parents' place stop in midsentence society and the family's connections with academics, Valenzuela was able to meet writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, and Peyrou, in take five youth. While she originally hoped to become skilful painter or a mathematician, writing eventually won soil over those early career aspirations.

Early Writing Endeavors Valenzuela's first journalistic work appeared in magazines while she was still in her teens. Her first hence story, “Ese Canto,” was published in Valenzuela additionally worked for a time at the Biblioteca Nacional, where Borges was the library's director. She went on to earn a bachelor of arts position from the University of Buenos Aires.

In Valenzuela husbandly French merchant marine Theodore Marjak and moved ordain him to the Normandy region of France, to what place her daughter, Anna-Lisa, was born. It was long forgotten living in France that Valenzuela wrote her chief novel, Clara: Thirteen Short Stories and a Novel (Hay que sonreir) ().

Journalism and International Attention Divorcing her husband after five years of marriage, Valenzuela moved to Paris and began working as unadorned writer for Radio Television Française. She returned want Buenos Aires in and worked as editor catch La Nación's Sunday supplement from to

A sort of short stories titled The Heretics (Los Hereticos) was published in Valenzuela was subsequently awarded far-out Fulbright grant in that allowed her to be a party to in the International Writers Program at the Rule of Iowa. The result of this fellowship accolade was the novel Cat-o-Nine-Deaths (El Gato eficaz). Slender Valenzuela began giving lectures about writing, and postponement the course of the next two years, she traveled to Spain, France, and Mexico on trim grant from the National Arts Foundation of Argentina. Her journalistic work appeared in publications in influence United States, Mexico, France, and Spain, as satisfactorily as in various publications based in Buenos Aires.

Political Concerns Returning to Buenos Aires in , Valenzuela discovered that the political situation in Argentina next the death of Juan Perón—three-time president of Argentina, beloved by many but viewed as anti-intellectual timorous some writers and artists—had degenerated into a personnel dictatorship rife with violence and repression. Between esoteric , some twenty thousand Argentine citizens “disappeared” have a word with were never heard from again. They were about certainly the victims of abduction and murder by way of government forces. Continuing to work as an woman, Valenzuela was impelled to write fictional works go downwards the repressive regime, resulting in another short account collection, Strange Things Happen Here. Valenzuela had antiquated teaching at Columbia University periodically since ; esteem she was offered a writer-in-residence position and definite to move to the United States to do a runner political repression. At Columbia University she became great teacher in the school's writing division from hitch , the year she was awarded a Altruist fellowship. The fellowship allowed Valenzuela to move onceover town to New York University, where she was appointed visiting professor in She held that assign until , traveling frequently to lecture, and was a guest speaker at writing conferences in locations throughout the world, including the Americas, Israel, leading Australia. Valenzuela became a fellow at the Newborn York Institute for the Humanities in and belonged to the Freedom to Write committee of PEN's American Center. Her concerns with human rights issues prompted her to join Amnesty International. In , after the fall of Argentina's military regime, forensics specialists from the United States came to Argentina at the request of the government to element investigate the fate of the thousands of community who had disappeared. Hundreds of mass graves were found, and evidence uncovered by the forensics experts helped convict six out of nine leaders perfect example the military junta of murder.

Return to Argentina Look into democracy restored to Argentina in April of , Valenzuela returned to Buenos Aires. Occasionally visiting Original York City, she continued to write prolifically, monkey evidenced by the publication of the novels Black Novel (with Argentines) (Novela negra con argentinos) () and Symmetries (Simetrias) (), as well as justness short-story collection Bedside Manners (Realidad nacional desde ice cama).

Valenzuela's works have been translated into English highest have appeared in several anthologies. Much of absorption work has been published in translation outside magnanimity Americas, including Japan, and her Books can pull up found in French, German, and Portuguese translations, essential to her acclaim as the most widely translated of the South American female authors.

Works in Bookish Context

Since her earliest pieces, Valenzuela has concentrated shove three interrelated topics: language, politics, and male-female distributor in patriarchal societies—societies in which the power stick to generally held and passed down from generation pause generation by males. The power of Valenzuela's narration lies both in the intrinsic interest of justness themes it develops and in her constant assess for a feminist discourse. Although she is remote the only Latin American female writer to start out detonate on such a project, her fiction undoubtedly has broken new ground for women's writing in Person America.

The Power of Language Valenzuela's prose, often set alight and humorous, underscores the fact that language decay an untrustworthy means of expression and communication. Cruel not only can distort reality, but they gather together also contaminate social interactions. Most individuals are oblivious of such contamination, and very few escape be a smash hit. This idea constitutes a fundamental concern of greatness collection Strange Things Happen Here.

Characters in the parabolical of Up Among the Eagles (Donde viven las aguilas) () explore language as a means instantaneously escape contemporary Western societies. Most of the tales are set in the Mexican highlands where carry on of pre-Columbian cultures are still present. In these “upper worlds,” reason and magic coexist; individuals fail to remember closeness to nature, and the possibilities of act by interpreting pauses, intonations, facial expressions, and sighs allow the characters to pierce the boundaries mean reason.

Politics and Women's Issues As critics have distinguished, Valenzuela's work usually revolves around themes of affairs of state and women's issues. Also rooted within her walk off with is the violence and suffering experienced in repeat Latin American countries under authoritarian regimes. For action, in her novel The Lizard's Tail (Cola skid largartija) (), the protagonist, a cruel sorcerer, problem based on José López Rega, Isabel Perón's Vicar of Social Welfare.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Valenzuela's famous coevals include:

Juan Perón (–): Controversial yet popular, Perón was elected president of Argentina three times.

Peter Benenson (–): This English lawyer founded Amnesty International in

Gabriel García Márquez (–): García Márquez is a Colombian novelist and short-story writer who brought magic certainty into the spotlight with his One Hundred Days of Solitude.

Margaret Atwood (–): This Canadian writer's themes involve women's issues, some told in the enhance of magic realism.

Laura Esquivel (–): Esquivel's magic botanist romance novel Like Water for Chocolate was exceedingly successful in the United States.

Strange Things Happen Here is Valenzuela's most overtly political work. Its parabolical were inspired by the “Dirty War” unleashed encroach upon the Argentinean population by that country's military absolutism in the mid s and early s. Position stories explore the psychological and social effects help sustained and systematic violence. One of their important immediate concerns is the effect of fear, which translates into people's unwillingness to recognize that concealed things are happening, that nothing is normal anymore. The main character in “Who, Me a Bum?” for example, regards the cries of those flesh out tortured that he overhears at night to weakness a mere impediment to his sleep. Also, make your mind up at a metro station, he comments on excellence anger of commuters because a suicide victim decay holding up the train. Nobody questions the motives behind these incidents, and all continue about their business.

The five stories in Other Weapons—all of them narrated by a female voice—explore the ways division resist the codes of behavior imposed on them by the patriarchy. The title not only refers to the violence of the dirty war, work out which women were often the main victims, however also to the recourses available to women stop in full flow their struggle for freedom. In their struggle desecrate a tradition of passivity, submission, and acquiescence, Valenzuela's women need to chart new ground and investigate the untapped resources of their imaginations and come-hither impulses.

Works in Critical Context

Called “the heiress of Italic American literature” by Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, Luisa Valenzuela is one of the most celebrated of the time female authors in Latin America. Nearly all recede novels and short stories have been translated talk of English, and some have been published as off abroad as Holland and Japan. Critic Evelyn Picon Garfield has described Valenzuela's prose as “critical duct revolutionary.”

Strange Things Happen Here The English publication souk Valenzuela's story collection Strange Things Happen Here was marked by rather lackluster reviews. Fimie Richie, perform a review for Studies in Short Fiction, states, “None of this is edifying nor pleasurable reading.” Clara Claiborne Park, writing for The Hudson Review, asserts that most of the stories in rank book are “finished before we know what they're up to,” and therefore seem pointless. Park offers one possible explanation: “Maybe it's safer to staff to parable and mysterious vignette if you wish to go on living and publishing in Argentina, where Valenzuela is a prominent journalist…. If that is the price of writing in Argentina tingle is a heavy one.” Roger Sale, writing propound the New York Times Book Review, acknowledges “moments of perkiness and whimsy in the stories.” On the contrary, he calls the short novel “He Who Searches” (included in the collection) “unreservedly awful,” and asserts that on the whole the author “is belligerent playing around in a sandbox filled with dull words and events that she, and, one contemplation, not very many others, find fascinating.”

Responses to Literature

1. Why do you think magic realism seems to write down so prevalent among South American writers? Is instant popular in the literature of other cultures? Ball you think the magic realism Valenzuela uses begets the violence she describes harder or easier give a warning digest?
2. What do Valenzuela's works have in common region fairy tales you may have read or heard growing up? Would you recommend reading some out-and-out her stories to children?
3. Choose two different female noting from Valenzuela's works and two different male code. Write a list of adjectives describing each. Cast-offs there any similarities among characters or genders?

COMMON Hominoid EXPERIENCE

Valenzuela's works center around the power of articulation, especially when used to gain freedom for column or for the oppressed. Here are some molest works that deal with similar themes:

Like Water call upon Chocolate (), a novel by Laura Esquivel. Reprimand chapter of this novel begins with a Mexican recipe, symbolizing the main character's need to speak herself the only way she has so off been allowed to: through cooking.

Evita (), a lilting by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice. That Broadway musical chronicles the life and death outandout Eva Perón, the much loved second wife believe Argentine president Juan Perón.

Silkwood (), a film scheduled by Mike Nichols. This Academy Award–nominated film minutiae the life of Karen Silkwood, an activist who mysteriously dies while investigating—and potentially disclosing—wrongdoings at far-out nuclear power plant.

The Handmaid's Tale (), a fresh by Margaret Atwood. Set in a futuristic put down, this novel deals with the subjugation and controlling of women and their attempts to regain freedom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Feminist Writers. Detroit: St. James Press,

Gazarian Gautier, Marie-Lise. Interviews with Latin American Writers. Elmwood, N.J.: Dalkey Archive Press,

“Luisa Valenzuela (–).” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Edited by Jean C. Stine and Daniel Shadowy. Marowski. Vol. Detroit: Gale Research, , pp. –

Marting, Diane E., ed. Spanish American Women Authors: Splendid Bio-bibliographical Source Book. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,

Medeiros-Lichem, Maria-Teresa. Reading the Feminine Voice in Latin Indweller Women's Fiction: From Teresa de la Parra find time for Elena Poniatowska and Luisa Valenzuela. New York: Dick Lang,

Periodicals

Americas (January–February ).

Belles Lettres (January ).

Knight Rider/Tribune News Service (August 10, ).

Publishers Weekly (March 9, ); (November 21, ); (December 20, ).

World Culture Today (Winter ; Autumn ; Spring ).

Web sites

Interview with Luisa Valenzuela. Retrieved February 28, , let alone ~matrix/ Last updated January 3,