Angles on Otherness in Post-Franco Spain : The Fiction of Cristina Fernandez Cubas

Jessica Folkart offers a timely and much needed study of how Christina Fernandez Cubas explores issues of identity in democratic Spain. Cubas' work is considered among the most influential work in identity construction and her first collection of short stories, Mi hermana Elba, was hailed by critics and writers alike as the initiator of a renaissance in Spanish short fiction. She has since established herself as a master of the genre and applied her talents to the novel and theater as well. This study explores the reconstruction of identity in the context of post-totalitarian Spain, and more widely, of post-modern Western culture. This book is organized so that each chapter foregrounds a collection of short stories of the author's two novels as a backdrop for exploring a key angle of identity formation. It sets Fernandez Cubas' innovative Spanish texts in dialogue with key theorists such as Bakhtin, Bhabha, Butler, Foucault, Kristeva, and Vatimo in its analysis of the ongoing mediation of contemporary identity.