Citation

Craft LJ. Bull. Hisp. Stud. 2006; 83(1): 75-85.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Liverpool University Press)

DOI

10.3828/bhs.83.1.6

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since the signing of peace accords in the 1990s, Central American literature has turned from a testimonial vein to more personal discourses (memoir, interior journey, exploration of the erotic). Salvadoran writer Jacinta Escudos emerges during this period, pursuing themes related to tensions experienced by women and, more broadly, by a variety of social pariahs in a repressive patriarchal society. She turns inward, often through the literary device of stream of consciousness, or free indirect style, to examine the consequences of domestic violence, emotional battery, and stultifying social mores. In this paper, I examine several short stories from Escudos's 1993 collection, Contra-corriente. Escudos offers no easy answers, tidy endings, or moralizing conclusions. She creates alienated dark characters. In her vision, society (her 'zoociedad'- a bestial, dehumanizing world) and its rules ironically increase our loneliness. I attempt to put this loss of solidarity/connectedness and the move toward solitude, suicide, and insanity, in the context of postwar El Salvador.

Language: en