"María Luisa": Delusions of Life and Death

Abstract

Via my dramatic text María Luisa (Ediciones Unicornio, 2013), I propose to examine here the figure of María Luisa Milanés (1893-1919) who, hailing from the city of Bayamo in the nascent Cuban republic, became an unquestionable figure in Cuban women's literature. I take as my point of departure her obscured historical-literary profile, the result of a hostile sociocultural context which was determined to ignore her. 

María Luisa is also an invitation to specialists of literature to engage in analysis of an incipient and poorly realized narrative discourse, and a more sophisticated lyrical discourse. The text aspires to recover this writer in 'gender studies', and to function as the theoretical framework for a deeper critical analysis, thus far lacking in a true Milanesian literary sensibility. It is an attempt to enrich the bibliography in this area with a comprehensive sociocultural focus in which the inter-genre project which prevails in the work of María Luisa Milanés may circulate from micro socio-cultural history towards a broader female discourse, and thus form part of the national discussion.