Reviewed in Choice

September, 2004

Barbas-Rhoden (Wofford College) evaluates key Central American women novelists—Claribel Alegría, Gioconda Belli, Rosario Aguilar, and Tatiana Lobo-and the ways in which each has rewritten and remembered history and gender in her fiction. While giving readers general understanding of Central American history and the works of these writers, Barbas-Rhoden looks specifically at how these women differ from noted latin American male writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Rubén Darío and their interpretations of “modernity.” She focuses on the effects of revolution and globalization on women in the isthmus and these writers’ ability to represent a complex and changing Central American woman. Writing in an accessible style, she offers the reader an informed an informed study in accomplished writers the world should not overlook. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and graduate students.

—N.M. Peeterse, formerly, Virginia Community Colleges

Choice
September 2004