The Changing Spanish Family

Trotman (Spanish, U. of Otago, New Zealand) compiles 12 essays by a group of Spanish literature, language, and Hispanic studies scholars from the US, UK, and New Zealand who consider the cultural impact of the redefinition of family in Spanish society. Chapters analyze how authors, filmmakers, and playwrights particularly represent non-traditional Spanish families. They discuss new representations of family, motherhood, same-sex parents, custodial fathers, and other forms in parenting guides, novels such as Los Estados Carenciales and A Xeira das Arbores, and the police novels of Alicia Gimenez Bartlett, as well as depictions of family, motherhood, female identity, and patriarchy in contemporary cinema by Pedro Almodovar, Pedro Aguilera, and Pilar Miro, and in Te Doy Mis Ojos, El Bola, and La Buena Estrella. The final section addresses Spanish theater, particularly new portrayals of parents and motherhood and Basque national history in plays by Maite Agirre and Teresa Calo Fontan, and mother-daughter relationships in Federico Garcia Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Tiffany Trotman is a senior lecturer in Spanish at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.