‘Feminine Plural shows that a revolution is taking place in literature written in Portuguese and Spanish. After many years of being silenced by dictatorships, colonial injustice, and systemic problems of access to education, women from the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America are not only making their voices heard, but also, in the process, creating previously unseen literary forms in order to be able to tell their previously untold stories. I had not known how important it was to examine recent life-writing by women in my own language until I had this book in my hands. And if I needed proof that a personal story is more than a small cog in the mechanics of the world, this is it.’ – Susana Moreira Marques, writer ‘For several decades now, women’s autobiographical writing has been flourishing. Many women writers narrate their personal experience, marked out by their condition of womanhood, by experiences such as their relationship with their mothers, migration, adoption, racism, motherhood, the rural world, infertility, sexuality, exile … In this well-documented and entertaining book, two great experts in Luso-Hispanic women’s literature, Maria-José Blanco and Claire Williams, introduce and guide the reader through this vast new field of writing.’ – Laura Freixas, writer In the short period since our volume Feminine Singular came out, life-writing by women in the Luso-Hispanic world has proliferated, justifying another book of essays on the topic. Not only are more women choosing to write (about) themselves, they are doing so in innovative ways that cross conventional generic boundaries. They openly discuss previously taboo subjects, speak out against injustice and provoke changes in policy and attitudes. Furthermore, they embrace plurality, by recognising the achievements of their foremothers and celebrating their peers; expressing themselves through fragmentation and collage; and, ultimately, working and reading and writing together. These essays introduce an Anglophone readership to some of the most exciting and audacious Luso-Hispanic women writing and making art today. They bring together a mixture of personal essays and short fiction, alongside more traditional literary critical research, to show what women’s life-writing can do.
