Disruptive Writings in the Greater Caribbean from the Dominican Republic and Cuba: Rita Indiana and Ena Lucía Portela.
Keywords:
carribean literature, literary style, writing, Rita Indiana, Ena Lucía PortelaAbstract
This article analyzes the writing of Rita Indiana and Ena Lucía Portela, authors from the Greater Caribbean, known for their disruptive and unique style that challenges various literary conventions. Rita Indiana's La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) will be taken as a case study, examining the elements of her style that subvert both writing and structural impositions, while also questioning aspects inherited from colonization. Also, Ena Lucía Portela's Cien botellas en una pared (2010) will be addressed, highlighting its intertextual construction, the questioning of boundaries between fiction and reality, and its parody of the literary genre of noir novels. Taking into consideration these innovative and tempestuous literary styles, this article aims to contribute to the study of writing forms, a field that remains underexplored, particularly concerning Latin American and Caribbean female authors.
References
Alemany Bay, C. (2019). ¿Una nueva modalidad de lo insólito en tiempos posmodernos?: la narrativa de lo inusual. En N. Álvarez Méndez & A. Abello Verano (Eds.), Realidades fracturadas: estéticas de lo insólito en la narrativa en lengua española (1980-2018) (pp. 307-324). Visor Libros.
Araújo, N. (2003). Erizar y divertir: la poética de Ena Lucía Portela. En: Diálogos en el umbral. 82-111. Santiago de Cuba, Editorial Oriente.
Benítez Rojo, A. (1998). La isla que se repite: el Caribe y la perspectiva posmoderna. Barcelona: Casiopea, Colección Ceiba.
Barthes, R. (1994). El susurro del lenguaje. Más allá de la palabra y de la escritura. Paidós.
Barthes, R. (2011a). El Grado cero de la escritura y nuevos ensayos críticos. Siglo veintiuno editores.
Barthes, R. (2011b). El placer del texto y lección inaugural. Siglo veintiuno editores.
Birkenmaier, A. (2014). El linchamiento, el teléfono móvil y la gran ciudad: dos ficciones negras de Ena Lucía Portela. Mitologías Hoy, 10, 63-71. https://raco.cat/index.php/mitologias/article/view/285563.
Bustamante Escalona, F. (2017). Rita Indiana Hernández: una escritura que retuerce los márgenes y los paradigmas de representación identitaria. En F. Bustamante Escalona (Ed), Rita Indiana Archivos (259-289). Ediciones Cielonaranja.
Condé, Maryse. (2019). Corazón que ríe, corazón que llora. Salamanca: Impedimenta.
Fanon, F. (2016). Piel negra, máscaras blancas. Madrid: Ediciones Akal.
García Robayo, M. (2015). Hasta que pase un huracán. Bogotá: Laguna Libros.
Golubov, N. (1995). La masculinidad, la feminidad y la novela negra. Anuario de Letras Modernas, 5, 99-121. https://doi.org/10.22201/ffyl.01860526p.1992.5.935.
Estévez Ballestero, M. A. (2019). Cuerpos del Desastre: Mutantes, Transformistas y (A)normales. Caracol, (18), 83-100. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-9651.v18i18p83-100.
Herrmann, J. B., van Dalen-Oskam, K., & Schöch, C. (2015). Revisiting Style, a Key Concept in Literary Studies. Journal of Literary Theory, 9(1), 25–52. https://doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2015-0003
Hey-Colon, R. (2023). Channeling Knowledges. Water and Afro-diasporic Spirits in Latinx and Caribbean Worlds. Texas: University of Texas Press.
La mucama de Omicunlé obtiene el Gran Premio de Literatura. (2017). Librería Siglo. Recuperado de https://libreriasiglo.com/noticias-eventos/ver/81-premio-mucama-de-omincunle.html
López, M. (2011). Tras el legado de Marlow: novelas cubanas de hoy. América Latina Hoy, 58, 81-99.
López, M. & Portela, E.L. (2009). Ena Lucía Portela. Entrevista. Hispamerica, Abril, Año 38, No. 112, 49-59.
Nancy, J. (2009). La evidencia del filme. El cine de Abbas Kiarostami. Errata naturae ediciones.
Martín Sevillano, A. B. (2014). Violencia de género en la narrativa cubana contemporánea: deseo femenino y masculinidad hegemónica. Hispanic review, 82(2), 175-197.
Portela, E.L. (2010). Cien botellas en una pared. Doral. Florida: Stockcero.
Portela, E.L. (2009). El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos. Doral. Florida: Stockcero.
Portela, E.L. (2017). Con hambre y sin dinero. La Habana: Ediciones Unión.
Previtera. R. (2014). Entre intertexto y paratexto: los juegos cultos de Ena Lucía Portela. Mitologías Hoy, 10, 115-127. https://raco.cat/index.php/mitologias/article/view/v10-previtera
Rita Indiana (2015). La mucama de Omicunlé. Cáceres: Periférica.
Roas, D. (2006). Hacia una teoría sobre el miedo y lo fantástico. Semiosis,2 (3), 95-116.
Robinson, (1985). Style and Personality in the Literary Work. The Philosophical Review, 94(2), 227-247. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185429.
Romo Carmona, M. (2013). No se puede ser cubano en cualquier parte: la metáfora del derrumbe en La fiesta vigilada y Cien botellas en una pared. Crítica Hispánica, 35(2), 240-254. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1233&context=cc_oers.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Eidos

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term "Work" shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher a nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons 3.0 License Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC 3.0, or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions: (a) Attribution: Other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;(b) Noncommercial: Other users (including Publisher) may not use this Work for commercial purposes;
4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
5. Authors are permitted, and Eidos promotes, to post online the preprint manuscript of the Work in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work is expected be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Eidos's assigned URL to the Article and its final published version in Eidos.