Vampires, Fatal, Merciless: Women Who Subscribe(Write) Women in Camila Fernandes’s Short Stories

Abstract

The 21st century has seen the emergence of female writers who, through the medium of horror, portray the anguish and scabrousness that many South American women go through: gender violence, mental illness, tyranny, unequal social and economic relations between genders, abandonment, femicide. We see authors who bring to light characters with their traumas and fears, and it's up to us, the readers, to deal with the pain that can also be ours. The aim of this work, therefore, is to make a critical-analytical reading of the short stories “Das Dores” and “Alho, cebola & sangue”, by Brazilian writer Camila Fernandes, in order to scrutinise how an unusual figure like the vampire woman can raise issues that afflict women in contemporary times. Through the unusual and horror, South American women's writing in the 21st century remains steadfast in its aim to create a space for denunciation, as can be seen throughout this article.