De apogeo revolucionario a desilusión política: género, subjetividad e identidad política en la narrativa de Gioconda Belli (1988-2001) = From revolutionary apogee to political disillusion : gender, subjectivity and political identity in Gioconda’s

Abstract

Due to the late seventies revolutionary and political events in Central America, women had to redefine their search for equality from a national and a personal perspective. Considering the his-torical context of revolution, violence and chaos and specifically in Nicaragua, the purpose of my work is to analyze the relationship between socialist revolution and women’s political emancipa-tion in the Central American context. In this sense, Gioconda Belli’s literary works reflect the parallel representation of women’s search for political involvement with developing of Sandini-sta revolution from 1988-2001 as well as the goals, achievements and the failures of sandinismo. The works that share these concerns are: La mujer habitada (1988), Sofía de los presagios (1990), Waslala, memorial al futuro (1996) y El país bajo mi piel, memorias de amor y guerra (2001). To explain the process of testimonial literature toward building a national and individual identity, my work analyzes the testimonial discourse theories of Linda Craft, Laura Barbas-Rhoden, John Beverley, Marc Zimmerman and Margaret Randall to demonstrate how to: chal-lenge the patriarchal norms of gender and class; critique Sandinista patriarchal discourse; rewrite history to revindicate women as historical subjects due to revolutionary involvement and; recre-ate memories of women’s participation in the sandinista revolution.