SOURCE: "Journal to Luisa Valenzuela's Land of Fear," in World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 4, Autumn, 1995, pp. 683-90.

In the following essay, Ainsa considers the transformation in Luisa Valenzuela's work from individual to collective fear and discusses her attempt to overcome fear through writing.

Child psychiatrists utilize a test called "The Land of Fear," developed on a principle using short phrases and drawings, which allows them to measure anxiety in children. The test is arranged into four categories: aggression, insecurity, abandonment, and death. The symbols that embody this "land of fear" are of a cosmic nature (natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, floods, and volcanic eruptions) and represent a terrifying bestiary (dragons, monsters, wolves, and other malevolent animals) as well as violent or wicked beings (hangmen, devils, witches, torturers, skeletons, ghosts, and apparitions). The landscape of this realm is made up of dismal forests, cemeteries, impenetrable castles, dark dungeons...