To Talk about Violence. Children's Voices in Socorro Venegas and Silvia Aguilar Zéleny's works

Abstract

The literary production of contemporary Mexican writers serves as an important sounding board for violence, poverty and alcoholism. In many works, children, either as protagonists or narrators, are the medium through which these thorny topics are address, in stories with great narrative tension that engage the reader in a deeply personal way. Such writings fall within what Christina Rivera Garza has called “disappropriation,” a narrative style that assumes a debt to others, a joint commitment to the common good. This article uses the concepts of “disappropriation” and narrative tension in selected short stories by Socorro Venegas (SLP 1972) and Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny (Hermosillo 1973) to understand how children’s voices in their works address notions of violence and power in both urban and rural contexts.