Women Write Back: Contemporary Irish and Catalan Short Stories in Colonial Context.
Author: BOADA-MONTAGUT, Irene.
Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003. ix, 207 pages. Hardback.
Short story writing has flourished in twentieth-century Ireland and Catalonia. The genre has attracted some of the finest writers but in particular women authors. This book considers the disadvantaged position of women in Irish and Catalan society as refracted through the medium of the short story. The writers under discussion include Edna O’Brien, Julia O’Faolain, Eilis Ni Dhuihne, Mary Beckett, Clare Boylan, Mary Dorcey, Angela Bourke, Bourke, Katy Hayes, Anne Devlin, Merce Rodoreda and Caterina Albert.
Women Write Back also explores the subordinate position of Ireland and Catalonia historically in relation to the metropolitan powers of Britain and Spain respectively. The cultural implications of the colonial connection are considered from the viewpoint of women and men.
The study breaks new ground in placing Ireland and Catalonia within the same comparative framework. There are of course differences between the two societies: the languages and geographical settings are far removed, for instance. But, on closer analysis, it is the similarities which predominate. Both are post-colonial societies, the status of women in many respects is comparable; issues of identity and language are to the forefront of consciousness and national debate. In this book feminist theorising and post-colonial discourses are fruitfully brought to bear on the literary creations of Irish and Catalan short story writers, in what might be described also as an exercise in literary decolonisation.
ISBN: 0716527499
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