Luisa Valenzuela
Luisa Valenzuela is a prominent Argentine novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and scriptwriter, recognized as one of the leading literary figures to emerge from Argentina since the 1960s. Born to a literary family, she was exposed to writing from an early age and began her career contributing to various magazines. Valenzuela's work often reflects the complexities of Argentine society, grappling with themes of violence, political repression, and cultural struggles, particularly from a female perspective.
Her debut novel, *Clara*, tells the story of a naive girl navigating the harsh realities of Buenos Aires, blending humor with a poignant exploration of alienation and male brutality. Valenzuela has lived and worked in various countries, including France and the United States, which has influenced her writing style and thematic focus. Throughout her career, she has received several accolades, including the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía Award, and has remained an influential voice in literature, even as her work faced censorship in her home country.
Additionally, she has held academic positions and leadership roles, such as the presidency of PEN Argentina. Despite not publishing new works since the early 2010s, Valenzuela continues to be regarded as a vital figure in contemporary literature, engaging with global and national dialogues through interviews and public discussions.
Luisa Valenzuela
- Born: November 26, 1938
- Place of Birth: , Argentina
ARGENTINE NOVELIST AND SHORT-STORY WRITER
Biography
Luisa Valenzuela, Argentine novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and scriptwriter, is one of Argentina’s most significant authors to emerge since the boom in Latin American literature during the 1960s. As the daughter of Luisa Mercedes Levinson, a prominent Argentine writer, Valenzuela was initiated into the world of the written word at an early age. Her father, Pablo Francisco Valenzuela, was a doctor. She was reared in Belgrano and received her early education from a German governess and an English tutor. In 1945, she attended Belgrano Girls’ School and then an English high school. She began writing for the magazine Quince Abriles in 1953 and completed her studies at the National Preparatory School Vicente López in 1955. Subsequently, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Buenos Aires. She wrote for the Buenos Aires magazines Atlántida, El Hogar, and Esto Es and worked with Jorge Luis Borges in the National Library of Argentina. She also wrote for the Belgrano Radio and was a tour guide in 1957. During this time, her first short stories were published in the magazine Ficción.
In 1958, when she was twenty years old, Valenzuela left Buenos Aires to become the Paris correspondent for the Argentine daily newspaper El Mundo. There, she wrote programs for Radio Télévision Française and participated in the intellectual life of the then-famous Tel Quel group of literary theorists and structuralists. She married French merchant marine Theodore Marjak, resided in Normandy, and gave birth to a daughter, Anna-Lisa, in 1958. Three years later, she returned to Buenos Aires and joined Argentina’s foremost newspaper, La Nación, where she became assistant editor. After she was divorced from her husband in 1965, she went to the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop on a Fulbright grant in 1969. In 1972, she received a scholarship to study pop culture and literature in New York. She then became an avid traveler, living in Spain, Mexico, New York, and Buenos Aires; participating in conferences; continuing her journalism; and cultivating her fiction.
Her first novel, Clara, presents the story of a naïve country girl turned prostitute in Buenos Aires; the girl’s picaresque adventures in a male world alternate between the humorous and the sinister. As the novel progresses, the antihero’s forthrightness slowly changes into a pathos under the constant attack of the city’s anonymity, alienation, and male brutality. Valenzuela won the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía Award in 1973 for the Spanish version of the novel, “Hay que sonreír,” which was later published as Clara in the United States. Her experience in New York's Greenwich Village experience resulted in El gato eficaz (the efficient cat), an experimental novel sustained largely by the innovative use of language and an imaginative plot. In 1975, she returned to Buenos Aires and joined the staff of the journal Crisis. After participating in more workshops and conferences, she left Buenos Aires and settled in New York in 1978, where she conducted creative writing workshops and taught Latin American literature at Columbia University, as well as at other universities in the United States. She returned to Buenos Aires in 1989. In 2015, she became president of PEN Argentina.
Although she has lived much of her life outside Argentina, Valenzuela, like other Argentine women writers, could not escape her involvement with an Argentine society torn by violence, class struggle, dictatorship, and dehumanization. Thus, much of her fiction, though written and published outside her native country, where it was banned, treats such themes as violence, political repression, and cultural repression, especially as they relate to women. Yet, as critics point out, her work continually undermines social and political myths while (unlike that of so many political writers) refusing to replace old mythic structures with new but equally arbitrary and authoritative ones. Valenzuela has not published a work since the early 2010s. Still, interviews with media outlets, including the New Orleans Review and The Collidescope, throughout the 2010s and early 2020s confirm Valenzuela remains an essential voice in Argentinian society and the world of literature in the twenty-first century.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Hay que sonreír, 1966 (Clara, 1976)
El gato eficaz, 1972
Como en la guerra, 1977 (He Who Searches, 1979)
Libro que no muerde, 1980
Cola de lagartija, 1983 (The Lizard’s Tail, 1983)
Novela Negra con Argentinos, 1990 (Black Novel with Argentines, 1992)
Realidad nacional desde la cama, 1990 (Bedside Manners, 1995)
La travesía, 2001
El mañana
Cuidado con el tigre, 2011
La máscara sarda: el profundo secreto de Perón, 2012
Short Fiction:
Los heréticos, 1967 (The Heretics: Thirteen Short Stories, 1976)
Aquí pasan cosas raras, 1975 (Strange Things Happen Here: Twenty-six Short Stories and a Novel, 1979)
Cambio de armas, 1982 (Other Weapons, 1985)
Donde viven las águilas, 1983 (Up Among the Eagles, 1988)
Open Door: Stories, 1988
Simetrías, 1993 (Symmetries, 1998)
Cuentos completos, y uno más, 1998
Nonfiction:
Peligrosas palabras, 2001 (essays)
Escritura y secreto, 2002 (essays)
Los deseos oscuros y los otros, 2002 (essays)
Bibliography
Anderson, Megan. "Artist Profile: Luisa Valenzuela." Fem, 30 Apr. 2018, femmagazine.com/artist-profile-luisa-valenzuela. Accessed 28 Nov. 2018.
Bach, Caleb. “Metaphors and Magic Unmask the Soul.” Americas, vol. 47, Jan./Feb. 1995, pp. 22-28.
Correa, Gaspar. “Rich Cosmologies: A Rare Interview with Luisa Valenzuela.” The Collidescope, 6 Nov. 2022, thecollidescope.com/2022/11/06/rich-cosmologies-an-interview-with-luisa-valenzuela. Accessed 8 July 2024.
Hoeppner, Edward H. “The Hand That Mirrors Us: Luisa Valenzuela’s Re-Writing of Lacan’s Theory of Identity.” Latin American Literary Review, vol. 20, Jan.-June 1992, pp. 9-17.
Kim, Elizabeth Sulis, et al. “Luisa Valenzuela.” New Orleans Review, 2018, www.neworleansreview.org/luisa-valenzuela. Accessed 8 July 2024.
Logan, Joy. “Southern Discomfort in Argentina: Postmodernism, Feminism, and Luisa Valenzuela’s Simetrías.” Latin American Literary Review, vol. 24, July-Dec. 1996, pp. 5-17.
McNab, Pamela J. “Sexual Silence and Equine Imagery in Valenzuela and Cortazar.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 76, Apr. 1999, pp. 263-279.
Magnarelli, Sharon. “Simetrías: ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall. …’” World Literature Today, vol. 69, autumn 1995, pp. 717-726.
Marting, Diane. “Female Sexuality in Selected Short Stories by Luisa Valenzuela: Toward an Ontology of Her Work.” Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 6, fall 1986, pp. 48-54.
Marting, Diane. “Gender and Metaphoricity in Luisa Valenzuela’s ‘I’m Your Horse in the Night.’” World Literature Today, vol. 69, fall 1995, pp. 702-708.
Morello-Frosch, Maria. “‘Other Weapons’: When Metaphors Become Real.” Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 6, fall 1986, pp. 82-87.
Rubio, Patricia. “Fragmentation in Luisa Valenzuela’s Narrative.” Salmagundi, nos. 82/83, spring/summer 1989, pp. 287-296.
Tomlinson, Emily. “Rewriting Fictions of Power: The Texts of Luisa Valenzuela and Marta Traba.” Modern Language Review, vol. 93, July 1998, pp. 695-709.
Valenzuela, Luisa. Interview by Elizabeth Sulis Kim. New Orleans Review, 2018, www.neworleansreview.org/luisa-valenzuela. Accessed 28 Nov. 2018.
Valenzuela, Luisa. Interview by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier. In Interviews with Latin American Writers. Elmwood Park, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1989.