In honor of Women’s History Month and our March 2022 storytelling theme, I selected Short Stories by Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real edited by Celia Correas de Zapata to review.

Celia Correas de Zapata, a San Jose State University professor of Hispanic literature is an internationally recognized expert in the field of Latin American fiction written by women. According to Correas de Zapata, until recently, Latin American men dominated Latin American literature.

Correas de Zapata has collected stories by thirty-one authors from fourteen countries.

The contributors include Isabelle Allende, Dora Alonso, Louisa Valenzuela, Rosario Ferré, Ana Lydia Vega, and Elena Poniatowska.

This anthology includes a powerful foreword by Isabelle Allende who discusses the evolution of Latin American women authors in predominantly male-dominated societies.

Their stories reflect a change in that order and seek to dispel many stereotypes about Latin American women.

A couple of things immediately registered with me about this anthology. The women in these stories are diverse. Some are young and some are in their twilight years. Some are wealthy and educated while others live in poverty and were never allowed to seek higher education. As diverse as the characters are, they share many indomitable characteristics. They are strong women who face the challenges of life with courage. They are not content to let the men in their lives dominate their stories. They are a mixture of quiet elegance and spirituality.

“An Act of Vengeance” by Isabelle Allende tells the story of Dulce Rosa, a beautiful young girl whose father is murdered in front of her before she is brutally raped. She waits patiently for decades before she gets the opportunity to avenge her father’s death and exact her revenge on the man who attacked her, but vengeance and revenge come in an unexpected manner.

In a moving story, “Cloud Cover Caribbean” by Ana Lydia Vega of Puerto Rico, the passengers on a refugee boat headed for Miami turn on each other instead of banding together. It’s a snippet of the insecurities we all face magnified by the problems of people seeking a better life in an idealized setting where everyone might not be welcome.

The stories are as diverse as the characters. They are gently sprinkled with realism, surrealism, and the supernatural proving that Latin American women have the vision and creativity needed to succeed as authors and take their places among the literary greats of their generations.