Colección: INTERAMER
Número: 70
Año: 2001
Autor: Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, Editora
Título: El río de los sueños: Aproximaciones críticas a la obra de Ana María Shua


1. From the opening paragraph of the essay “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” Benjamin longs for “the art of storytelling” and the lost “ability to exchange experiences.” According to him, the reasons are to be found in the rise of the print dependent genre, such as the novel, and the fact that “experience has fallen in value” (83-84).

2. Gilbert and Gubar, for example, claim that the voice that is heard from the mirror in “Snow White,” is the voice of the patriarchal society.

3. Although more focused on Shua’s formal experimentation with the genre of “cuentos brevísimos,” Rhonda Dahl Buchanan also makes references to the revisionist project of fairy tales in her insightful article “Literature’s Rebellious Genre: The Short Short Story in Ana María Shua’s Casa de geishas.”

4. Bruno Bettelheim mentions only one fairy tale, “The Three Feathers,” in which the toad is used instead of the frog (289).

5. Marie-Louise Von Franz explains that in many Catholic countries, women who have childbearing problems or any other illness associated with the uterus, suspend the healing image of a wax toad as an ex voto in the churches where they request the intervention of the saints (73).

6. It would be an inaccurate oversimplification to assume that all the women of Latin America share the same oppressive conditions. The life of upper class criollo descendants in Argentina is very different from that of indigenous descendants in neighboring Bolivia. In addition to gender, class and race play a determining factor in the reality of Latin American social structures. However, in spite of the fact that upper class women have the opportunity to hire domestic help, and thus create space and time for writing and other artistic endeavors, their oppression comes from the same source: the patriarchal order.

7. Los días de pesca is preceded by the dedication which reads: “A mi madre.” The status of language in the paratext of “dedications” is generally read as the clearest expression of authorial intention, tied to the realm of desire and reality constructed by it.