Writing the Other: Rhetoric and Gender in Testimonial Writing. A Review of Joanna R. Bartow's <em>Subject to Change: The Lessons of Latin American Women’s Testimonio for Truth, Fiction, and Theory</em> (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina PP, 2005)

Authors

  • Aarti Madan University of Pittsburgh

Keywords:

genders, Julio Ramos, fiction, theory, truth

Abstract

In describing mid-nineteenth century reception of Sarmiento’s now institutionalized masterpiece Facundo, Julio Ramos effectively indicates that issues of veracity within the historico-literary sphere have traumatized Latin America for nearly two centuries. With his declaration that “[t]hesplit between poetry (as well as fiction) and true social history generates a foundational tension,” we note that literature is relegated to what might be demarcated the left side of the split, whereas authoritative forms of historical truth reside comfortably on the right. It is precisely this split-cum-tension that Joanna R. Bartow attempts to analyze and overcome in her Subject to Change: The Lessons of Latin American Women’s Testimonio for Truth, Fiction, and Theory.

Author Biography

Aarti Madan, University of Pittsburgh

Aarti Madan es candidata al doctorado en la Universidad de Pittsburgh, donde actualmente goza de la beca de Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) para investigación y aprendizaje del portugués y la cultura luso-brasileña. Se especializa en la literatura del siglo XIX de Brasil, Argentina y Colombia, por lo que su tesis rastreará la formación de la nación latinoamericana a través del cruce entre el lenguaje y la naturaleza. Sus investigaciones, además, se enfocan en testimonio, estudios afrolatinoamericanos y teoría postcolonial, dentro del contexto filológico. Forma parte del comité editorial de la revista de estudiantes graduados Osa Mayor, y participó en el congreso de LASA 2007 con la ponencia “The Language of Abjection: Impurity and Identity in Clarice Lispector’s A Hora da Estrela.”

Published

2007-08-01

How to Cite

Madan, A. (2007). Writing the Other: Rhetoric and Gender in Testimonial Writing. A Review of Joanna R. Bartow’s <em>Subject to Change: The Lessons of Latin American Women’s Testimonio for Truth, Fiction, and Theory</em> (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina PP, 2005). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 5(1), 253–258. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/385

Issue

Section

Reviews: Testimonios