The Hour of the Star

"With this choice I am giving just one out of a myriad of possible examples of women writing in Latin America, in a field that still tends to be dominated by big-name male writers. At the time that these male writers were reaching international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, Clarice Lispector was writing with much less fanfare very interesting short stories, usually about a crisis in the consciousness of middle class Brazilian women. The example I have chosen is a very short novel and her last published work, written when she was dying of cancer. In it she depicts ordinary women in Brazil. The ones who are migrants and come from the north-east, fetch up in Rio and try to make their way in very menial jobs. The story, which is told by a self-absorbed male narrator, plots the life and early death of Macabea, a poor young woman from the north-east who ends up in Rio working as an incompetent typist. What is interesting is that through this male narrator, who both loathes and is fascinated by his fictional creation, Lispector is exposing the nature of patriarchal society in Brazil . She also evokes an enormous tenderness for women who don’t have a voice and can’t make sense of life, and yet just get on with it. It is only about 100 pages long and it is a really beautiful novel."