Childhood and Adolescence in the Short Stories of Andrea Jeftanovic and Andrea Maturana: An Aesthetics of Uncertainty

• In Event: Memoria chilena

Abstract

This paper examines the changing role of childhood, adolescence, and family relations in the works of two Chilean women writers who began their literary careers in the aftermath of the military dictatorship. I focus specifically on the collections "No aceptes caramelos de extraños" (2012) by Andrea Jeftanovic and "No decir" (2006) by Andrea Maturana, both of which place the figure of the child in a web of situations marked by transgression, vulnerability, and moral uncertainty. I argue that, as young novelists, these women writers wrestle with both the legacy of an authoritarian regime that legitimized itself through conservative “family values” and the moral, ethical, and political choices faced by those who came of age during Chile’s formal democratization. What emerges in the work of Jeftanovic and Maturana is an aesthetic of uncertainty: while the child/adolescent figure takes center stage, her/his world is neither governed by the strict hierarchies of the past nor geared toward a clear sense of social emancipation. Both authors favor ambiguity and undecidability in their depiction of the child/adolescent figure: sons who wrestle with their parents’ revolutionary choices as they become parents themselves; children who are abducted from the street and cause affective breakdown in their parents’ lives; daughters who imagine their broken family genealogy through disenchanted versions of a fairy tale. Both authors emphasize the reader’s involvement in evaluating the role of the child figure in a society still wrestling with the legacy of a traumatic past.

Author

• Alexandru V Lefter, University of South Dakota