Mujeres de ojos grandes by Angeles Mastretta : postmodern feminism

Includes bibliographical references (pages [51-53])The diversity of postmodernist literature reflects the rapidly changing paradigms within our society today. The current Latin American narrative has various forms, themes, styles and manners. Many times the theme is ordinary and the language is irreverent, direct and sometimes vulgar. Literary perspectives that did not customarily form part of the usual literary assumption (homosexuality or woman) have been their instruments of preference. Angeles Mastretta's novel Mujeres__de Ojos Grandes (Women With Big Eyes) is an excellent example of this new Latin American narrative. It has a common theme, the quotidian life of women in Mexico around the 1950's. The series of vignettes are presented from a woman's perspective. The language is colloquial, irreverent and sometimes even vulgar. Mastretta's mastery of the language in this way allows her to humorously criticize society. The importance of the role of women writers in the rise of postmodernist literature is a critical one. A literary text does one of two things: it perpetuates the established order or it attacks it either totally or partially. In either case, the established order is a reference point used to produce the meaning of the text organized by the dominant narrative vision. The dominant narrative vision in Muieres de Oios Grandes is a feminist one. Yet Angeles Mastretta has succeeded in attacking the established order in a nonadversarial manner by using humor and sarcasm, and thus has established herself as a leading female writer in Latin America.M.A. (Master of Arts