Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Contemporary Galician Women Writers by Catherine Barbour

2022; American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; Volume: 105; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hpn.2022.0037

2153-6414

Silvia Oliveira,

Galician and Iberian cultural studies

Reviewed by: Contemporary Galician Women Writers by Catherine Barbour Silvia Oliveira Barbour, Catherine. Contemporary Galician Women Writers. Legenda, 2020. Pp. 133. ISBN 978-1-7818-8823-9. Published by the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain & Ireland, Contemporary Galician Women Writers by Catherine Barbour is an important introduction of a Galician topic to an impressive collection of titles in the series Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures of LEGENDA (Modern Humanities Research Association). The book is based on the author’s doctoral research at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. Contemporary Galician Women Writers is a focused study of the narrative fiction and public personae of three contemporary Galician women writers: Teresa Moure, Luisa Castro, and Marta Rivera de la Cruz. The study delves into the controversial, politicized debate on galeguismo (Galicianness) in contemporary Galicia and Spain through the analysis of two novels by each writer published between 2000 and 2010. The book is divided into several brief chapters: an introduction is followed by two overview chapters on “Galician Literary History: Challenges and Accomplishments” and “Narrative by Women: New Directions,” then followed by three chapters dedicated to each one of the writers, and ending with a brief conclusion. The umbrella-style title of this study, Contemporary Galician Women Writers, is well served by an introduction that benefits the uninitiated reader or student of Galician literature and culture. The author often situates Galician culture in comparison with cultures that seem to be familiar to her readership: on the first page of the introduction, Rosalía de Castro’s commodification in Galicia is enticingly compared with the global phenomenon of “Fridolatry”; likewise, the Galician experience of “multilingual and multicultural heritage” in Spain is associated with the experience of the Welsh language and culture in the UK (1). The two references help to bind the theme of this study, which is a debate of the linguistic and cultural/national identities of three contemporary Galician female writers in their narrative fiction. [End Page 303] In keeping with an informative approach to her theme of study, Barbour presents two eloquent overviews of Galician Literary History (chapter 1) and Narrative by Women (chapter 2). These overviews are framed by discussions of evolving concepts and perceptions of “threatened identities” (15) in Galicia attributed to the workings of Spanish imperialism and patriarchy. The first chapter, and in fact the entire study, is anchored on a quote in epigraph from the Galician poet and critic Maria do Cebreiro Rábade Villar, that connects the persistence of Galician identity into the 21st century to the existence of Galician literature (11); however, such “literary [Galician] citizenship” (17) is constantly challenged by the realities of a marketplace and political arena dominated by Spanish-centric ideologies and policies. Along with surveying the challenges faced by peripheral regions within the Spanish state, the focus on women writers introduces the richly contentious topic of “double minorities” (per the 1997 influential bio-bibliographic book by Kathleen McNerney and Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca) in postnational, postfeminist Galicia. Therefore, the second chapter expands the survey from chapter 1 and examines a trope of Galician studies, the binary gender-nation symbolized by Rosalía de Castro that mid-20th-21st-century Galician women writers and critics have sought to dismantle or surpass (28–29). Catherine Barbour’s focus on fiction written by Galician women in the 21st century, until then an “androcentric” expressive domain in Galician language (33), points toward new avenues to read and to know contemporary Galician culture. According to the author, the “proliferation of novels by women” in the 21st century pushes against the “patriarchal tenets of Galician nationalism and Galician literature” and the “systematic repression of the Galician language and women’s voices” during the Franco dictatorship (33). Barbour identifies thirteen Galician-language women writers publishing since 2000 in the literary genre that narrates the nation (Homi Bhabha): the novel. The three critically acclaimed writers selected for study in chapters 3, 4 and 5 represent three perspectives on Galician language and identity in use and debate in contemporary Galicia and Spain. Teresa Moure is a prolific writer and also a critic and University professor in Galicia, who leads a nationalist and ecofeminist perspective, writing...