PhD Candidate in Spanish and Minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

(Spring 2026)

This dissertation delves into the presence of childhood as a perspective in connection to the development of language, narration, and adulthood. Considering the process of growing up not in linear and unidirectional way, the concept of liminality is helpful. Some of Lispector, Arenas, Ángel, and Mercado texts share a complex vision of childhood in which children and young people are not passive but rather have agency. Moreover, I argue that these narratives employ distinct language emphasizing childhood as a pertinent point of view in diverse contexts. My reading includes a girl’s questioning of the education strategies in the traditional Brazilian classroom in Lispector’s Perto do coração selvagem and Arenas’ idiosyncratic vision of childhood in which the child survives a Cuban context that does not accept him. Moreover, I consider insights of girls in contexts of political and private violence in novels by Ángel and Mercado, two authors less studied than Lispector and Arenas.