Palma Román, Angélica (1878–1935)

Born in Lima on October 25, 1878, and educated at Colegio Fanning, Angélica Palma Román wrote essays and stories in the form of letters, travel accounts, children's stories, novels (historical, psychological, and modernist), and biographies of celebrities. She was the daughter of the Peruvian tradicionista Ricardo Palma and the sister of the novelist Clemente Palma. An aesthetic and feminist innovator for her times, she used Hispanic creole and colloquial forms as well as artistic experimentation, and she was skilled at creating characters with psychological depth. She was awarded the International Novel Prize in Buenos Aires in 1921, the Historical Novel Prize in Lima in 1924, and the Commendation of the Order of Alfonso XII in Madrid in 1926.

Palma Román's modernist but moderate views on the status and conditions of women are evident in her novel Uno de tantos (1926), in which she criticizes the power of irresponsible fathers, fiancés, and husbands; though she did not support women entering politics, she questioned the ideological constraints that prevented women from having access to education, culture, or mental independence. Her historical novels, Por senda propia (1921), Coloniaje romántico (1923), and Tiempos de la Patria vieja (1926), depict colonial life, Spain's legacy in Peru, and the violent transformations undertaken to establish the democratic republic. All are imbued with her deep love of Peru, which, in Al azar (1928), she called a "nuanced, complex and ironic creole society." Palma Román died in Rosario, Argentina, on September 6, 1935.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America; Palma, Clemente; Palma, Ricardo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martínez Gómez, Juana, and Almudena Mejías Alonso. Hispanoamericanas en Madrid, 1800–1936. Madrid: Horas y Horas, 1994.

Rojas Benavente, Lady. "Figurando, desfigurando y configurando la feminidad en La sombra alucinane (1939) de Angélica Palma." In Escritura femenina y reivindicación de género en América Latina, edited by Roland Forgues and Jean-Marie Flores, pp. 87-101. Paris: Thélès, 2004.

Román, Angélica Palma. Páginas dispersas de la escritora. 1937. Lima, Peru: Sociedad Amigos de Palma, E. E. B. Sucesor, 1937.

Tamayo Vargas, Augusto. Literatura peruana, 3 vols. Lima, Peru: PEISA, 1992–1993.

                                 Lady Rojas Benavente