Creating space in the margins: power and identity in the "cuentos breves" of Pia Barros and Cristina Peri Rossi

Creative expression, whether public or private, can be read as the manifestation of an individual's desire for freedom, for empowered selfhood, and for inclusion in the discourses of one's community. Pia Barros and Cristina, Peri Rossi, two Latin American women who have successfully created space for their voices through literature, use their prose fiction pieces to question the nature of identity and the politics of community for those as yet without recognized place or voice. Barros and Peri Rossi are writers who have challenged and ultimately transcended boundaries both personal and professional, as victims of political oppression and as artists noted for literary works that violate orthodox genre definitions.(1) They rebel in both substance and style, utilizing an undervalued, under represented art form--the cuento breve [very short story]--to explore issues of powerlessness in society.

The cuento breve occupies a particularly marginalized position within what is still a hierarchy of literary genres. In Latin America, the cuento breve is a form that has generally been mistrusted and misunderstood by readers, writers and publishers alike. Readers who are reluctant to commit the time and mental energy required by lengthy novels, for example, and who mistakenly equate physical brevity with a fast and easy read, can be put off by the sophistication and ambiguity that has been a hallmark of the cuento breve form. Similarly, writers with whom I have spoken repeatedly bemoan the unexpectedly difficult task of producing stories that are meaningful, polished, and yet markedly concise. Finally, and perhaps most prejudicial of all, many editors mistakenly view the cuento breve as an incomplete or inferior work of art. Because publishers operate, at least in part, out of a concern for the bottom line, they have avoided the form as being too physically insubstantial for the buying public. Readers, they fear, will not consider that they are getting their money's worth when buying a book that is so weightless when compared to a hefty novel that sells for the same price. Consequently, the cuento breve is often only able to negotiate space for itself as "filler" in the literary sections of newspapers or, in some cases, as fliers handed out in buses and on street corners, unprepossessing and impermanent flashes of art.(2)

In her analysis of an early cuento breve by Pia Barros, Liliana Trevizan sees the text as an articulation of variables of class and gender, which she identifies as issues of power. In A horcajadas [Astride], the book I will focus on for this paper, sex and sexuality have become the locus of struggles for identity and power. Sex--and it is usually sex without love--surfaces the quest for domination, and power becomes a source of erotic arousal. Indeed, many stories tacitly or explicitly couple sex with violence. In "Prefiguracion de una huella" ["Foreshadowing of a Sign"], the first story in the collection, a female narrator, employing physical and psychological force, insists on the sexual devotion of her male partner. The language she uses to describe their relationship evokes a sense of battle. There is no dialogue, no hint of love or tenderness; indeed, the powerful control she has over her lover borders on sadomasochism:

Lame mis rodillas, devocioname . . . sometete, succioname, lame

mi deseo y el dolor muerde mis hombros y tiembla, deja que te

invada el temor, la ansiedad, restregare mi rostro en tu angustia

y tendre que sostenerte con fuerza . . . estaras llorando y yo sere

poderosa e invencible ante ti y no podras tomarme, ahora que eres

tan vulnerado, . . . derrotado. . . . (11-12)(3)

From the beginning, the narrator positions herself as the center, alternating between object and subject in the brief space of the text without ever forsaking control, demanding as hers the role of both giver and taker of pleasure.

This first story sets the tone for the rest of the book. Barros's erotic texts present woman's desire as a revolutionary act, and in her writing she refuses to relinquish or subordinate female jouissance to a traditional male-centered discourse. Throughout the stories in A horcajadas the struggle for power is waged on many levels, and the chief strategy for women is appropriation: appropriation of the narrative voice; of the theme of sexuality; of the privilege of orgasm and self-gratification; and of language, where explicit terminology--pene, pezones, pubis [penis, nipples, pubis]--unashamedly replaces metaphor. Suzette A. Henke, writing about women's erotic literature, voiced a concern that, "By consenting to the terms of a male discourse of desire, women authors have relinquished the power to articulate their own sexuality. All too often, they surrender the female point of view to a pornotopic language of phallic urgency" (53). Barros, in contrast, acknowledges, even celebrates, the reality of female sexual desire and a woman's right to pleasure. Her literature is a declaration of emancipation for women's sexuality, for in her stories women are openly assertive in their pursuit of sexual fulfillment. Her appropriation of sex as a theme and the explicitness of her descriptions represent a bold transgression of predominant Latin American literary and cultural boundaries.