Clorinda Matto de Turner
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Clorinda Matto de Turner was a Latin American writer of the age of Latin American independence. She was born in Cuzco, Peru in 1852. Growing up in Cuzco, which was the old Inca capital, Matto de Turner became very familiar with indigenous culture and embraced this culture. Her familiarity and fondness of the culture is what inspired most of her writings. Matto de Turner became popular for her literary works portraying the indigenous people in a more positive light, which was a contradiction to the views held in her time. Even though she was of white ancestry, she did not agree on the treatment of the indigenous people, and she used her writings to speak out on their behalf. She also used her writings to campaign for better education for women.
Matto de Turner is known for several literary works, including a magazine that she founded called El Recreo; as an editor of literary journals and newspapers such as La Bolsa, El Perú Illustrado, and El Búcaro Americano, novels; and the translation of the Gospels into Quechua. She published three novels between 1889 and 1895, which are Birds without a Nest, Character, and Heredity. Her most famous novel was Birds without a Nest, which she published in 1889. This novel was controversial because it was about a love affair between a white man and an indigenous woman, which was considered a disgrace in Latin America during this time, and because it spoke of the immorality of the priests during that period. Birds without a Nest was not the only work that was controversial, however one could argue the point. Matto de Turner published a controversial story written by a Brazilian writer by the name of Henrique Coelho Neto in her newspaper, El Perú Illustrado. The publishing of this story led to her excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1895, she was forced by the government to leave Peru. She moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and resided there until her death in 1909.
[edit] Further reading
- Berg, Mary G. "Clorinda Matto de Turner". Spanish-American Women Writers. Ed. Diane E. Marting. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990, pp. 303-315.
- Berg, Mary G. "Writing for her Life: The Essays of Clorinda Matto de Turner", in Reinterpreting the Spanish American Essay: Women Writers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Ed. Doris Meyer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
- Castagnaro, R. Anthony. The Early Spanish American Novel. New York: Las Américas, 1971; "The Indianist Novels", pp. 139-157.
- Cornejo Polar, Antonio. "Forward". Torn from the Nest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: xiii-xlii.
- Davies, Catherine. "Spanish-American Interiors: Spatial Metaphors, Gender and Modernity". Romance Studies 22.1 (Mar 2004): 27-39.
- Fox-Lockert, Lucía. "Clorinda Matto de Turner: Aves sin nido (1889)". Women Novelists in Spain and Spanish America. Metuchen, N.J: The Scarecrow Press, 1979.
- González Pérez, Aníbal. "Novel and Journalism: Strategic Interchanges". Eds. Mario J. Valdés & Djelal Kadir. Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History. 3 Vols. Vol 2: Institutional Modes and Cultural Modalities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004: II: 278-288.
- Higgins, James. A History of Peruvian Literature. Liverpool: Francis Carnes, 1987, pp. 74-79.
- Kristal, Efraín. "Clorinda Matto de Turner". Latin American Writers. Vol. I. Ed. Solé/Abreu. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989: pp. 305-309.
- Kristal, Efraín. The Andes Viewed from the City. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.
- Lindstrom, Naomi. "Forward". Birds Without a Nest. By Clorinda Matto de Turner. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996: vi-xxi.
- Lindstrom, Naomi. Early Spanish American Narrative. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004; sobre Matto de Turner, 170-174.
- Prieto, René. "The Literature of Indigenismo". The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Ed. Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
