Contemporary Argentinian women’s writing has gained significant recognition in the US and the UK since the late 2010s. English-language translations of Argentinian women writers have been nominated for literary awards, featured in prestigious outlets of literary criticism, and been presented at book festivals. In the work of many of these authors, including Mariana Enriquez, Selva Almada, and Dolores Reyes, gender-based violence – a global human rights violation – emerges as a central theme. This thesis examines how narratives of gender-based violence (ranging from misogynistic microaggressions to feminicide) in texts by Enriquez, Almada, and Reyes are translated, produced, and received in US and UK book markets. This is the first study to interrogate the articulation of gender-based violence in contemporary Argentinian women’s writing through the lens of English and in the context of the Anglosphere. As such, it contributes to a more general understanding of the interplay between Argentinian, UK, and US literary, translation, and publishing dynamics. Employing a transnational approach, this study complements a body of scholarship in Argentinian literary studies that has explored diverse depictions of gender-based violence in the original texts. It examines source and target texts alongside their respective paratexts, providing a multifaceted view and incorporating sociocultural perspectives on how articulations of gender-based violence are modified when introduced into US and UK book markets. The textual analysis detects changes in the translated representation of personal identities, cultural elements, settings, intersectional discriminations, and instances of gender-based violence. The paratextual analysis draws on literary criticism, book design, epigraphs, endorsements, authors’ and translators’ notes, interviews, and, in some instances, governmental reactions. Importantly, the examination of the paratexts also incorporates genre-related discussions and reception by specialist and non-specialist readers on social media and online reading platforms. This focus on paratexts demonstrates the important role that diverse agents – including critics, readers, and publishers – play alongside authors and translators in establishing how these translated texts are promoted, received, and reinterpreted transnationally. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the increased public and political attention to gender-based violence in Argentina alongside the heightened transnational recognition of Argentinian women’s writing. This increase in visibility and celebration is often referred to as part of a ‘new Boom’, a term I explore when applied to authors such as Enriquez, Almada, and Reyes. Taking into account the obstacles Argentinian women writers face in gaining transnational prominence, the chapter also looks at opportunities created by book festivals, tours, prizes, and subsidies. Lastly, this chapter reviews previous research on Argentinian women’s writing in the transnational book market, as well as existing theoretical and methodological approaches to studying women’s writing in translation. Chapter Two looks at three short stories about gender-based violence written by Mariana Enriquez and translated by Megan McDowell. The short stories in question are, first, “Chicos que faltan” (2009) and “Kids Who Come Back” (2021) published in, respectively, the collection Los peligros de fumar en la cama and its English translation The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. The second story that is analysed is “Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego” (2016) and “Things We Lost in the Fire” (2017) from the eponymous collection. The third narrative is the title story from her most recent collection, “Un lugar soleado para gente sombría” (2024), translated in English as “A Sunny Place for Shady People” (2024). Enriquez’s position in the English-speaking world is marked by a tension between frequent feminist interpretations of her work and her personal disinclination to be read and positioned as a woman writer. Instead, Enriquez often asserts her interest in Anglophone cultural production and its profound influence on her work. It is in part because of this proclivity to Anglophone culture that her work on gender-based violence contains a high degree of familiarity for the Anglophone reader: the short stories studied in this thesis reflect North American culture, containing references to popular culture, history and literature, including the Gothic tradition and true crime. Chapter Three studies Chicas muertas (2014) by Selva Almada, translated as Dead Girls in 2020 by Annie McDermott. Almada wrote this non-fiction work, based on three feminicides that occurred in the 1980s, to give real feminicide victims in Argentinian provinces greater visibility. Its small-town provincial backdrop has prompted both Argentinian and Anglophone literary critics to compare Almada’s non-fiction novel to the fictional subgenre of Southern Gothic. This tendency notwithstanding, the English edition has mainly been labelled a non-fiction text. Furthermore, among English-speaking readers, it has been received as a subversive, feminist form of true crime. Finally, Chapter Four analyses Dolores Reyes’s debut novel Cometierra (2019), a depiction of the dangers women and girls face in a left-behind neighbourhood in Greater Buenos Aires, translated as Eartheater in 2020 by Julia Sanches. Cometierra was chosen as a set text in some schools in Argentina but also denounced by conservative politicians due to its sexual content. Neither its didactic use or the ensuing controversy carried over to US and UK book markets, where the novel’s supernatural dimensions have attracted attention. In the Anglophone context, it has been primarily framed, mistakenly it can be argued, as magical realism. Taken together, the case studies highlight a tension between the transnational resonance of narratives on gender-based violence with English-speaking readers on the one hand, and the particular articulations of gender-based violence in the source texts which are shaped by specific Argentinian political, cultural, linguistic, and publishing contexts on the other. As a result, the reception of the texts in the US and UK often gives rise to new genre labels, different associations with pre-existing literary texts and traditions, and focuses on other dimensions than in the source text via specific cultural and historical frameworks in the English-speaking context. From a comparative textual perspective, this thesis finds three key shifts in the English translations of gender-based violence across the three case studies. Firstly, a tendency to expressly emphasise and foreground feminicide and physical violence against women and girls. Secondly, while in Eartheater more subtle forms of misogyny become obscured in translation, misogynistic microaggressions are often made more explicit for the Anglophone reader in Dead Girls and in Enriquez’s translated short stories. Finally, all three English translations exacerbate a perceived link between youthfulness, or even infantilisation, and feminicide. Related to this, women’s agency is central to the analysis of Eartheater and Dead Girls, as the protagonists’ agency is downplayed, and their vulnerability to harm increases in the English editions. However, this research finds that the most consistent and powerful way in which the Anglophone versions are at variance to the Argentinian source texts is paratextual rather than textual. In all three case studies, the literary label of feminist is applied more in journalistic discourse and in the translated paratexts, including texts from the publishers, translators, and authors, than in the paratexts surrounding the original versions. The accentuation of feminist discourse suggests that it has become a marketable tool for English-language translations. At times, this feminist emphasis creates a discrepancy between translated text and paratext, raising questions about the term ‘feminism’ as a tool to promote these particular texts, and the term’s potential to raise awareness about gender-based violence through translated literature. Across the case studies, journalistic discourse and the paratexts designed by publishing houses generally employ the notion of feminism as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ term, although the three authors in this thesis embody truly diverse interpretations of feminism, hence somewhat obscuring the diverse gendered and intersectional dimensions expressed in the source texts.
Elisabeth Goemans (Wed,) studied this question.