Women's Fiction from Latin America: Selections from Twelve Contemporary Authors

This impressive anthology, a sequel to Garfield's Women's Voices from Latin America: Interviews with Six Contemporary Authors, introduces the works of a dozen gifted Latin American women to an English-speaking audience. There are modern interpretations of traditional folktales (Cuban Lydia Cabrera's tragic ``The Mire of Almendares,'' which portrays Soyan Dekin, a beautiful, flirtatious mulatto who is destroyed when a jealous black man has an evil spell cast upon her); culture clashes (Elena Garro's ``The Tree'' reveals Mexico's duality in an unsettling encounter between an educated, haughty European and her former servant, a rural Indian, who comes to confess that she killed a woman and unveils the murder weapon); and haunting love stories (in Argentinian Luisa Valenzuela's ``I'm Your Horse in the Night,'' a lover who is missing, perhaps hiding or tortured, for months suddenly reappears with no explanation). Each writer has a unique, compelling voice, yet the women have much in common as well: the ability to capture the diverse cultures of Latin America and to convey complex, powerful emotions. Editor and translator Garfield offers concise, illuminating biographies of the 12 authors and includes photographs and bibliographies. (June)