“El Monstruo de mi Cuarto”: A Discourse Analysis of Three Short Stories Revealing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse

During the first days of January 2023, newspapers in Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries exploded with news about a viral story “El monstruo de mi cuarto”. This short story was the youth category winner from the 2022 “Medellin en 100 palabras” competition and it was massively shared on social media creating controversy. The story, short but powerful, spread awareness of a situation that a large number of children live in their household. In this paper, “el mostruo de mi cuarto” along with two more stories are analyzed in terms of their narrative structure and linguistic choices to identify the elements that make the story a strong piece of discourse that reveals experiences of domestic violence and child abuse. The findings suggest that vocabulary and the structural development of the texts were crucial to emphasize the intention of the stories.