Beyond the Border: A New Age in Latin American Women's Fiction

This collection of short fiction by contemporary Latin American women concerns travel ``beyond the border'' in two senses. It presents work by writers who, with the exception of Isabel Allende and Luisa Valenzuela, are largely unknown to English-language readers. In addition, its strongest stories deal with characters propelled beyond the boundaries of familiar experience. In ``A Passion for Donna Summer'' by Dominican Aida Cartagena Portalatin, the voice of the '70s disco diva exhorts a black girl to abandon her Catholic boarding school. She does, only to make the bitter discovery that her will to freedom, like Summer's music, is subverted by the strictures of a racist society. The narrator in Uruguayan Sylvia Lago's heartbreaking ``Homelife'' recounts how her husband's involvement with the mysterious Felipe ends in the destruction of her family and drives her from nearly everything she knows. These works set a high standard which, unfortunately, not all the pieces meet. Nevertheless, in collecting the stories and supplying bibliographies on the authors, the editors--academics in the field of Hispanic and Latin American studies--have made a valuable contribution. (May)