Glantz, Margo (1930–)

Margo Glantz (b. 28 January 1930), Mexican writer and critic. Professor emeritus of philosophy and letters at the National University of Mexico, Glantz was for a time director of the university's creative journal Punto de Partida and head of the department of literature at the National Institute of Fine Arts (1982–1986). Her work includes creative prose, literary and cultural criticism, and translations. Her memoir Las genealogías (1981), about her family of Ukrainian Jewish origin, won the Magda Donato Literary Prize in 1982. This was followed by the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for the prose poem Síndrome de naufragios in 1984. As a feminist, Glantz has defied the conventional "male" genres to render postmodern, innovative, and experimental texts in which a woman's perspective necessarily alters the traditional forms. As a critic, she is recognized for her controversial critique of "la generación de la Onda" (wave), a group of young writers influenced by the U.S. counterculture of the early 1970s. Glantz has also translated the works of Georges Bataille, Jerzy Grotowski, and Thomas Kyd.

Glantz was named a Council of the Humanities Fellow at Princeton University in 1994 and was inducted a year later into the Mexican Academy of Letters. In addition, she received a Rockefeller Fellowship (1996), a Guggenhiem Fellowship (1998), and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award for her novel El rastro (2003). Other works include Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Hagiografía o autobiografía? (2001), Historia de una mujer que caminó por la vida con zapatos de diseñador (2005), and La desnudez como naufragio: Borrones y borradors (2005). A prolific author, Glantz has also contributed chapters to numerous edited works.

See alsoFeminism and Feminist Organizations; Literature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Magdalena García-Pinto, "Margo Glantz" in Women Writers of Latin America: Intimate Histories (1988), pp. 105-122.

Nora Pasternac, "Margo Glantz: La escritura fragmentaria," in Mujer y Literatura Mexicana y Chicana: Culturas en contacto, vol. 1 (1988), pp. 205-210.

Magdalena García-Pinto, "La problemática de la sexualidad en la escritura de Margo Glantz," in Coloquio internacional: Escritura y sexualidad en la literatura hispanoamericana, edited by Alain Sicard and Fernando Moreno (1990), pp. 31-47.

Naomi Lindstrom, "No pronunciarás de Margo Glantz: Los nombres como señas de la imaginación cultural," Revista Iberoamericana 56, no. 150 (1990): 275-287.

Additional Bibliography

Agosín, Marjorie, ed. Memory, Oblivion, and Jewish Culture in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

Bravo, María Dolores, and Blanca Estela Treviño, eds. Margo Glantz: 45 años de docencia. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 2006.

Glantz, Margo. Narraciones, ensayos y entrevista: Margo Glantz y la crítica. Edited by Celina Manzoni. Valencia, Spain: Excultura, 2003.

                                       Norma Klahn