Forbidden love was a forbidden topic. Decorum was everything in society, where Catholicism dictated the terms, and in literature, where a code of decency governed writers and readers alike. To women were left the pale love stories that conducted appropriate partners in proper settings to socially acceptable outcomes. So it was in Latin America well into the twentieth century.

The stories in this volume announce a dramatic change, a transformation of the literature of love in Latin America, and of the role even the nature of women in this most feminine literary tradition. These stories, by...

Forbidden love was a forbidden topic. Decorum was everything in society, where Catholicism dictated the terms, and in literature, where a code of decency governed writers and readers alike. To women were left the pale love stories that conducted appropriate partners in proper settings to socially acceptable outcomes. So it was in Latin America well into the twentieth century.

The stories in this volume announce a dramatic change, a transformation of the literature of love in Latin America, and of the role even the nature of women in this most feminine literary tradition. These stories, by...