ABSTRACT
Spanish-speaking countries are seeing an unprecedented resurgence of feminism. The Argentinean #NiUnaMenos [Not One Woman Less] movement, the Spanish #Cuéntalo [Tell It] initiative, and the Chilean collective protest chant ‘Un violador en tu camino’ [A Rapist in Your Path] have been revolutionary projects that have reached international prominence. A collective rage against instances of sexist violence, such as the rape and murder of Nagore Laffage in Spain (2008) or Marina Menegazzo and María José Coni in Ecuador (2016), along with the judicial response to cases such as ‘The Wolfpack’ (2019) have partly fueled this resurgence. The Spanish publishing industry and the readers themselves have echoed these movements, and there has been a rise in attention to works by women authors and works of feminist non-fiction.
In this context, the publication in 2019 of the collection of short stories by Spanish-speaking women writers, Tranquilas. Historias para ir solas por la noche [Calm: Stories to walk alone at night], can be understood as part of a collective and transnational feminist endeavor that partly answers to — and stems from — this rage. The volume includes texts by authors from Spain, Ecuador, and Peru who try to answer the following questions: ‘What do we feel when we venture out? What painful memories accompany us? If something goes wrong, what are the tools that help us name what happened?’ (10). The authors tell stories of gender violence in the first person while negotiating the fear of being attacked when walking alone at night, as well as the necessity of abolishing victim-blaming and taking back the streets for all women. Many of the stories use the language of written horror (descriptions of abject entities and explicit violence) and the literary resources of the Gothic (the heroine who escapes from a dangerous pursuer) to portray contemporary fears associated with existing as a girl or woman.
This chapter considers the overarching themes of the collection (such as gender violence, resistance to victimhood, or the relevance of naming the violent act) and offers a close analysis of three of the stories: ‘Primero fueron los mocos, después el ninjutsu’ [First it was snots, then ninjutsu] by Edurne Portela, ‘Grita’ [Scream] by María Fernanda Ampuero, and ‘Bautismo’ [Baptism] by Aixa de la Cruz. These texts have young protagonists who find different ways of negotiating the realities of being a girl in a menacing world. In their attempts to write their own stories, the characters define and oppose the violence that haunts them, overcome their status as potential victims, and ultimately create a new model of female resilience.
