Biography
María Xosé Queizán has been a leading figure in the feminist movement of the Iberian peninsula for the last forty years, ever since she published her groundbreaking essay The Woman in Galicia (1977). Apart from her essays, which include studies on Mary Shelley and Emilia Pardo Bazán, she has written numerous works of fiction, including The Likeness (available in English), Love of Tango and Attention, Guard!, which look at marginalized groups in society and their struggle for equal rights. She has published poetry, plays, including Antigone, The Force of Blood (a finalist for the Álvaro Cunqueiro Prize), and an award-winning screenplay, Priscillian. She founded and directs the feminist literary magazine Festa da Palabra Silenciada (Festival of the Silenced Word).
Synopsis
Attention, Guard! (128 pages) is a collection of eleven short stories that focus on marginalized groups within society and their mistreatment at the hands of others. There is a second, revised and enlarged edition of this book, published in 2015.
Sample
Bang, bang, bang, the hammer blows echoed inside the prison, bang, bang, bang, they echoed and crept desperately along the rough stones, trying to find their freedom.
The walls were high. The first one encircled all the prison buildings like an all-encompassing, rigid girdle. Five meters away from it, the second wall ran parallel to the previous one, forming a trench. The walkway of packed down, colorless dirt that separated the stone walls was called the compound. It was completely bare. Nothing grew in that deserted gray space where only armed civil guards circulated on their watches. Locked iron doors were the way out of the oppression that everything was wrapped in.
Portico of Galician Literature 