Introductory Note

This bibliography of some six hundred entries has two relatively modest aims. First, we have sought to compile a list of bibliographical works relevant to the study of women, politics, and culture in Latin America. Second, we have sought to provide bibliographical updates in several relevant areas, listing works of the past ten to fifteen years that are likely not to have appeared in other sources.

The focus of this book on the history of women in politics, lettered culture, and intellectual life has dictated the priorities of this bibliography. Such emphases correct a conspicuous gap in the existing bibliographical literature. With a few notable exceptions, the intellectual, literary, political, and even pedagogical activity of Latin American women scarcely appear in bibliographical work on women in Latin America. In those few bibliographies that have sections on "culture," the term is generally taken to mean everyday life, domestic activity, manual work, reproduction, the body. Feminism has taught us the importance of these dimensions of women's being and activity. At the same time, to define culture exclusively this way with respect to women is to reproduce a male elitism that elides women's participation in intellectual, artistic, and political life except at the grass-roots and domestic

levels. "Third World" stereotypes can also be a factor here: in orthodox social science, Latin America is readily construed as a place without culture. We have not attempted to survey directly the current literature on women and health, reproduction, migration, demographics, and development, but we have included an extensive list of existing bibliographical works on these areas.

The materials assembled here come from several sources: first, our own research files and materials compiled for our study group; second, periodical indexes; and third, computer searches conducted at the Stanford and UC Berkeley libraries. Anyone who has attempted bibliographical work knows the limitations of these resources, in particular with respect to small-circulation, local, and occasional publications. The vital presence of such writings in contemporary Latin American feminism is suggested by the monthly review mujer/fempress (Chile), whose final pages each month list new pamphlets, monographs, circulars, and occasional publications. Few such writings appear here, however.

While literary criticism figures prominently in the bibliography, literary scholars will notice that we have chosen not to include studies of individual authors. Only general and comparative studies are included. This choice was the most drastic one we had to face in preparing this bibliography. It means that a great many scholars and colleagues engaged in feminist literary research are not represented or are underrepresented here. Quite simply, our resources were overwhelmed by the volume of work on individual authors in the past decade and by the logistics required for a responsible, comprehensive survey. Fortunately, other work, such as that of Diane Marting in the United States, to some extent corrects this omission. Marting's 1987 bibliography of Latin American literature by women will soon be accompanied by a more detailed volume, Fifty Spanish American Women Writers , which will survey criticism on the authors considered.

For similar logistical reasons, this bibliography does not attempt to survey current work on Chicanas, Puertorriqueñas, and Latinas in the United States. This was another difficult choice dictated by our lack of resources and expertise in these areas where current scholarship is extraordinarily rich. A recent bibliographical survey by Karen Lynn Stoner, Latinas of the Americas (1989), published by Garland Press, devotes many pages to Latinas of the United States and will, we hope, provide the compilation we could not attempt.