‘Esa tu sangre que ahora trepida con violencia’: Menstruation in Contemporary Hispanic Women’s Writing

• In Event: Mujeres que escriben

Abstract

2014 symbolically marked a new beginning in menstrual awareness with ‘International Menstrual Hygiene Day’ highlighting new attempts to break the silence around this topic which continues to cause unease in different societies.

Menstrual blood concentrates - and is revealing of - patriarchal ways of thinking about female bodies, fears, superstitions and ideas of shame. Such ideas are also transmitted in cultural products. Some writers, on the other hand, have challenged such stereotyped visions and offer new ways of conceptualising menstrual blood that can be liberating. This paper discusses the crucial role of menstruation in the works of contemporary Hispanic female writers such as Diamela Eltit, Andrea Jeftanovic, Cristina Peri Rossi, Andrea Maturana and Ana Clavel. In their texts menstruation is a topic that links the personal and the public and through which these authors explore eroticism, trauma and its role in the symbolism of transitions between life stages. The selected texts for this paper are not only thought-provoking in terms of their literary strategies, but also make us question social conventions, our own prejudices and the invisibility of a topic of such importance, which has also been neglected by literary scholars.

My wider research focuses on texts from both Latin America and Spain, and this, combined with the fact that menstruation affects all societies—influencing ideas of shame, health, sexuality and reproduction—means that the scope of this study also has the potential to broaden horizons though transnational, cross-cultural critical debates.

Author

• Ángela Lavilla Cañedo, University of Sheffield