The Street of Night

by Lucía Guerra

It is Chile, 1985, and the dictator has succeeded in stamping his absolute control on the military, the universities, the church . . . oh, and also on cemeteries, the city dump and clowns . . . What subversives can be left on the unstoppable march forward of the Fatherland? Just the whores – that strange, indecipherable and mysterious group of women who offer themselves for money. So it is that Colonel Arreola’s study centre ‘to unveil the mysteries of those sexual misfits who have devoted their lives to the malignant sins of the flesh’ comes to pass and Martina, Esmeralda and María de las Mercedes find themselves locked in the same cell under the meticulous scrutiny of the Colonel. Arreola is determined to discover why these women refuse to submit to the ‘chantilly lace blouse, low-heeled shoes and pleated skirt’ category that he has labeled ‘Submissive and a Good Mother’. Harsh and hilarious by turns, The Street of Night ranges in style from brutal reality to magic realism and slices through all notions that it is possible to categorize anyone. As the book unfolds, a dictator discovers that absolutism is not so absolute, while the prostitutes discover values within themselves that lifetimes of abuse had all but erased.

207 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

Lucía Guerra es una escritora y crítica chilena. Entre sus libros de Teoría Crítica se destacan: La mujer fragmentada: Historias de un signo (Premio Casa de las América,1994), Texto e ideología en la narrativa chilena, Mujer y escritura: Fundamentos teóricos de la crítica feminista, Subjetividades de origen mapuche en el espacio urbano (Premio Casa de las Américas 2013), Mujer, cuerpo y escritura en la narrativa de María Luisa Bombal, Ciudad, género e imaginarios urbanos en la narrativa latinoamericana y Escritoras latinoamericanas: De la mímica subversiva a los discursos contestatarios. Es autora de los siguientes libros de ficción: Más allá de las máscaras (Premio Gabriela Mistral auspiciado por Coté des femmes editions), Frutos extraños (Priemer Premio del Concurso Letras de Oro auspiciado por la Universidad de Miami y el gobierno de España, además del Premio Municipal de Literatura en Chile), Muñeca brava, Los dominios ocultos, Las noches de Carmen Miranda, Travesías del hombre lobo, Las pistas de Lucifer, Con voz de sombra: Crónica de un duelo y Santiago: Cuerpo a cuerpo.