Rethinking the Narrative in Fe en Disfraz: Latin American Female Slave Stories from Violence to (Self)-Emancipation

Abstract

As with her previous novels, Mayra Santos-Febres explore the often-complex (inter)connections between men and women in Fe en disfraz (2009). In this novel, she takes her readers on a historical exploration into Latin America’s Colonial slave past, intertwining this history with the 21st century. The novel revolves around two Caribbean historians, who are living and working in Chicago, María Fernanda Verdejo, known as Fe, and Martín Tirado and serve as guides on this journey linking the present-day to the past. Through an entanglement of stories, relationships, and historical reflections, Santos-Febres creates a distinctive narrative which helps the reader on this literary expedition. As such, this article addresses how the author’s narrative style combined with reverberations of a bleak period in Latin American history come together to re-contextualize the violent female slave narratives in order to focus on their emancipation, and ultimately, to reveal how the central character vocalizes her own desire to be emancipated from these echoes of the past.