SOURCE: Bell, Andrea L. “Creating Space in the Margins: Power and Identity in the ‘Cuentos Breves’ of Pia Barros and Cristina Peri Rossi.” Studies in Short Fiction 33, no. 3 (summer 1996): 345–43.

In the following essay, Bell explores Pia Barros and Peri Rossi's use of the cuento breve [brief short story to deal with issues such as oppression, misogyny, and the nature of identity.]

Creative expression, whether public or private, can be read as the manifestation of an individual's desire for freedom, for empowered selfhood, and for inclusion in the discourses of one's community. Pia Barros and Cristina Peri Rossi, two Latin American women who have successfully created space for their voices through literature, use their prose fiction pieces to question the nature of identity and the politics of community for those as yet without recognized place or voice. Barros and Peri Rossi are writers who have challenged and ultimately transcended...