There aren t a lot of Latin American women who are published, at least in Colombia, so it was quite a difficult project. They tend to publish small editions of short stories and few have made the best seller list or a course list. She says violence, domestic violence and the international drug war form the background of Colombian literature today. Colombia is one of the most violent countries in the world that is not in a declared civil war. The way women writers talk about kidnapping, or living through massacres, or living though torture and rape, is very different from the way men portray it.
Women don t create heroes in their texts in the way traditional narratives do.
I m working on narratives that happen to be by women or homosexuals or those who are outside what the state deems acceptable. I study in any text how women are represented in general. Her scholarship work in Colombia also expanded her sensibilities toward immediate inequities around her. Last year, she was a union organizer for graduate assistants in the University of California system when all eight campuses went on strike. If my scholarly work will allow me advocacy for things I believe in, that would be great.