Description
Novelist Alia Trabucco Zerán has long beenfascinated not only with the root causes of violence against women, but bythose women who have violently rejected thedomestic and passive roles they were meant by their culture to inhabit. Choosingas her subject four iconic homicides perpetrated by Chilean women in thetwentieth century, she spent years researching this brilliant work of narrativenonfiction detailing not only the troubling tales of the murders themselves,but the story of how society, the media and men in power reacted to thesekillings, painting their perpetrators as witches, hysterics, or femmes fatales. . . That is, either evil or out of control. Corina Rojas, RosaFaúndez, Carolina Geel and Teresa Alfaro all committed murder. Their crimes notonly led to substantial court decisions, but gave rise to multiple novels,poems, short stories, paintings, plays, songs and films, produced andreproduced throughout the last century. In WhenWomen Kill, we are provided with timelines of events leading up to andfollowing their killings, their apprehension by the authorities, their trialsand their representation in the media throughout and following the judicialprocess. Running in parallel with this often horrifying testimony are thediaries kept by Trabucco Zerán while she worked on her research, addressing theobstacles and dilemmas she encounteredas she tackled this discomfiting yet necessary project.
