Writing as an Act of Resistance: The Narrative of Wendy Guerra

Daughter of the well-known poet, Albis Torres, Wendy Guerra (Havana 1970) is one of Cuba’s most celebrated contemporary writers. A graduate of the Instituto Superior del Arte (ISA) with a degree in Film, Radio and Television Direction, and a former student of the late Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Guerra has been the recipient of several international literary prizes, including the Bruguera Prize in 2006 for her debut novel, Todos se van ( Everyone leaves ). In this novel, and subsequent ones, including Nunca fui primera dama (2008), Posar desnuda en la Havana (2011), Negra (2014), and her most recent, Domingo de Revolución (2016, Guerra presents readers with women living across various periods of Cuban history, and relies on first-person narrations, in particular epistolary fiction and in particular the diary form, as a way of inserting women into the nation. Her novels explore topics once considered taboo in revolutionary Cuba, including alcoholism, censorship, drug addiction, homosexuality, domestic violence and racism. In this talk, I will discuss Guerra’s work and illustrate the ways in which her female protagonists resist and challenge official patriarchal discourses through the act of writing in order to forge a space of their own.