Valenzuela, Luisa

(1938– )

   Argentine journalist and novelist. Born in Buenos Aires, Valenzuela is the daughter of the Argentine novelist Luisa Mercedes Levinson. Early collaborations in her career included the literary supplement of La Nación and El Mundo, both in Buenos Aires, as well as a stint at Radio Télévision Française in Paris, where she lived for three years. Her first novel, Hay que sonreír, was published in 1966. Between 1969 and 1978 Valenzuela spent many periods abroad, staying in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. During the “dirty war” in Argentina, she resided in the United States, where she taught at Columbia University and New York University. She has been the recipient of many honors, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.

   Valenzuela’s fiction often seeks to liberate language from the constraints imposed on individuals, particularly women, by patriarchy and political power. Sexual relationships are often examined and configured as relationships of power. Translated into several languages, the works most associated with the “dirty war” are the shortstory collections Strange Things Happen Here: Twenty-Six Short Stories and a Novel (1975) and Other Weapons (1982), as well as the novel The Lizard’s Tail (1983). An account of the life of José López Rega (El brujo, “the sorcerer”), private secretary to Juan Perón, The Lizard’s Tail is often read as a thinly disguised rendering of the dislocation and horror of Argentine society during the repression. A later novel, Black Novel with Argentines (1990), explores the conditions that gave rise to the “dirty war” in an apparently “civilized” society. In 1989, after the restoration of democracy, Valenzuela returned to Argentina.