Dissenting Voices: Women’s Autobiographical Writing in Post-Soviet Latvia of the 1990s
Dissenting Voices: Women’s Autobiographical Writing in Post-Soviet Latvia of the 1990s

Author(s): Sandra Mešková
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Latvian Literature
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: Agate Nesaule; Anita Liepa; Margita Gūtmane; Vizma Belševica; Inta Ezergaile; Latvian literature;
Summary/Abstract: Taking into account the urge to rethink history and reconstruct cultural tradition in East-Central Europe, it should perhaps come as no surprise that, in the 1990s, autobiographical writing in this region has been a prominent factor in the change of the socio-cultural and literary paradigm. This is certainly true of Latvian literature in the 1990s, an era which marked a radical and decisive break with Soviet culture. The personal accounts of World War II - the central event of twentieth century European history that established a clear-cut division between East and West in Europe - produced the new vision of this turning point in Latvian history. Many of these narratives were written by women authors of the World War II generation. These women remembered the time before the war when Latvia was a newly established independent state, as the time of their childhood. They witnessed the beginning of World War II and the Soviet-German-Soviet occupation of Latvia at the beginning of the 1940s, as well as the end of half a century of Soviet occupation at the end of 1980s and the reconstruction of Latvian statehood at the beginning of the 1990s.

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