Gioconda Belli: The Responsibility for Writing

Gioconda Belli is one of the most refined female voices of emancipation in twenty-century Latin American literature. Since her earliest works, this Nicaraguan writer carries out her own personal revolution starting with a rethinking of the female body, which takes on a symbolic and metaphorical meaning capable of representing the profound ideological change desired by Belli. According to the author, it is necessary to rethink the female role within Latin American societies so that women can acquire the status of subjects capable of freeing themselves from the markedly subordinated image that the patriarchal universe has reserved to them. This common thread guides the reader within the author’s production and it can be found also in her latest novel, Las fiebres de la memorias (2018), in which, exceptionally, a male protagonist appears, who will be able to redefine himself only through a ‘feminization’, an enhancement of that dimension of caring for others which is generally thought of as strictly belonging to a feminine universe.