LA GOZADORA DEL DOLOR

Because of her social and literary avant-garde activities during the first thirty years of the twentieth century, Graziella Garbalosa (La Habana, 1896-1977) -actress, singer, prolific poet and prose-writer- is an extraordinary figure in the Cuban artistic world. In spite of this strong presence in that nations cultural environment, but perhaps because of her continuous travels, there are few references to her in Cuban literary histories. Her works show a great awareness of narrative experiments (very much of the avant-garde period and notable in a woman writer), in which she explores the textualization -and hence the appropriation- of the female body. Her writing is all the more daring when placed in the context of her times, when honorable women were not considered to have erotic feelings. In 1920, married and with a daughter, she published a volume of poetry La juguetería de amor. Her first novel, La gozadora del dolor (Havana, 1922), issued when she had separated from her husband, corresponds to the melodramas typical of the era