La Lucha ed. Carolina Orloff

Edited by Carolina Orloff, this collection brings together some of the region’s most prominent feminist voices, from scholars and novelists to grassroots activists. Orloff’s editorial task is formidable: to trace shared experiences of feminism across a continent marked by profound linguistic, historical, cultural, and geographical diversity. Yet, despite these pluralities, she identifies a unifying thread within Latin American feminism: a rejection of the assumption that gendered experience is universally shared, a central tenet of much Western feminist thought.

Each essay in La Lucha offers a striking contribution, but the collection is at its most compelling when the authors draw connections between the past and the lived realities of women in contemporary Latin America. Esther Pineda G.’s essay Sexism and Racism: The Experience of Black Women in Latin America, for instance, situates the transatlantic slave trade within a specifically Latin American context, linking this historical violence to the ongoing struggles faced by Black women across the region. While the method of connecting past and present is not itself new, it is profoundly refreshing to see the slave trade addressed not through its usual North American lens, but as a devastating history that reshaped much of the world.

This, ultimately, is the strength of La Lucha. It opens space for feminist thought unbound by the assumptions of the Western canon, inviting readers to engage with ideas that emerge from the continent itself, ideas that are as urgent as they are transformative.

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Charco Press, 7 Oct