Huellas ignotas: Antología de cuentistas centroamericanas (1890-1990) (review)

Muñoz brings together some of the best short stories by Central American women writers for the two volumes of this critical anthology, a collection which follows several individual, national anthologies he has prepared of Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran short stories by female authors. Volume 1 includes texts written between 1890 and 1990 by a diverse group of forty-two writers; volume 2, which is not under consideration here, takes account of short stories produced between 1991 and 2005. Muñoz has arranged his anthology chronologically, by the year of publication of each of the stories he considers to be important and representative of tendencies in Central American women's writing. The title of the collection refers to the anthologist's interest in recovering lost and marginalized female voices and to contribute toward recognizing their place and importance within Central American letters. Muñoz's anthology reflects and is the fruit of a growing interest in this field. Significant research on the region's literature, including the study of its female writers, has emerged during the past two decades, thanks in part to the annual gatherings of the Congreso Internacional de Literatura Centroamericana (CILCA), which have brought together scholars and writers from Central America and around the world, and to venues like the online journal Istmo, which publishes recent research on Central American literature.

In his introduction, Muñoz discusses the marginalization of female writers from the literary history of the region and argues that in several cases women have been precursors of literary traditions dominated by male writers. For example, he points out that the theme of imperialism present in the Salvadoran Rafaela Contreras de Darío's exotic short story "Mira la oriental o la mujer de cristal" (1890) predates her famous husband's preoccupation with the territorial ambitions of the United States. He also notes that Berta María Feo of Costa Rica contributed to interest in the psychological short story and that her compatriot Yolanda Oreamuno's writings hastened the abandonment of costumbrismo within Costa Rican literature.

Muñoz has achieved a nice balance of writers born in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and several significant ones born outside the region, including the Salvadoran writer Leda Falconio, who was born in Italy, and Costa Rican writers Tatiana Lobo and Linda Berrón, who were born in Chile and Spain respectively. He has provided brief literary biographies in which he highlights the creative accomplishments of the authors he has selected for inclusion in the anthology. He also contextualizes and discusses the significance of each text.

With respect to the themes of the stories of this collection, Muñoz stresses the interest of these writers in the unequal relationship between men and women, as well as their concern for the social, economic, and political issues Central Americans have faced throughout their history. He observes that the negative impact of US military involvement in the region's conflicts has also strongly shaped the perspectives of Central American female authors. He notes that in addressing these themes, women writers have utilized humor and irony as a strategy to assuage the pain of stark social and political realities. Finally, he points out that there has been a growing interest in the themes of eroticism, along with racial and sexual identity, and that writers have employed a wide variety of innovative narrative strategies and styles to incorporate them in their stories.

Although there is insufficient space here to comment on all the stories, several stand out for their quality and their presentation of the themes Muñoz discusses in his introduction. The unequal relationship between men and women is found in Costa Rican writer Carmen Lyra's "Estefanía " (1931), which treats the economic injustice and physical abuse faced by poor women. In Linda Berrón's "Al parecer un mendigo" (1989), a beggar narrates his harsh life and downward spiral...