The following is a recent release available at the Campus Bookstore in Mallinckrodt Center on the Hilltop Campus or at the Washington University Medical Bookstore in the Olin Residence Hall. For more information, call (314) 935-5500 (Hilltop Campus) or (314) 362-3240 (School of Medicine).
"En Tono Mayor: Relatos de formación de protagonista femenina en Hispanoamérica," written by María Inés Lagos, Ph.D., associate professor of Romance languages and literatures in Arts and Sciences, focuses on how Latin American women writers in the 20th century portray the process of growing up female in societies in which the differences between masculinity and femininity are clearly defined.
Using an approach based on recent developments in feminist critical theory, which considers the interaction of gender, class, sexuality, religion, ethnicity and historical circumstances, the book establishes and describes a tradition. It proposes that the narratives examined -- covering a period from 1924 to 1991 -- constitute a specific novelistic subgenre that differs from the traditional Bildungsroman, or novel of development centered on a male protagonist.
This study shows that there is not one pattern but many modalities to express the protagonists' development and that the narrative strategies are inextricably linked to social and cultural conditions. The type of education the girls receive, their social environment, literary and cultural trends, as well as the politics of the period, have a strong influence on their upbringing. Although in most cases the protagonists lack adequate role models, thus creating a sense of confusion, this same uncertainty allows for a possible opening toward the future.
(Published in Spanish by Editorial Cuarto Propio, Santiago, Chile.)
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