Mujeres tristes

"Méndez Vides, a Guatemalan poet best known for his novel Las catacumbas (see HLAS 52:3592), collects 13 stories/vignettes focusing on the sad condition of women. In that regard, absences and ruptures are expected, yet the nucleus of these stories is the author's attempts at a new realism. For example, in 'Nueva York,' about a Guatemalan woman down on her luck in New York City, the author plays with stereotypes, not devoid of reverse racism, about Americans and Asians. When the character Margarita sees the Asian leave in a limousine, she is sad, not because she expected racial understanding from him, but because he is more fortunate than she. The stories' locales change, but the pessimism imposed by the narrative voice remains"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.