Monique, by

Luisa Coelho

Translated from the Portuguese by

Dolores DeLuise and Maria do Carmo de Vasconcelos  

ISBN: 978-1-929355-26-6

Price: $14 (trade paperback) * 56 pages  

Background of this novella: In 1929, Marguerite Yourcenar, writing in French, published her first novel, Alexis, or a Treatise on a Vain Conflict, in the form of a letter written by a husband to the wife of three years whom he had deserted.  In 2003, the Portuguese author, Luísa Coelho took up the task and created Monique in response to Yourcenar’s Alexis. Coelho’s novella, the letter Monique wrote in return to Alexis, explodes not only Alexis’s perception of Monique, but society’s perception of women as well. In it, she opens the door to an inner life unimaginable by both her husband and the society in which she lived. Monique allows a re-reading of Alexis that makes clear his lack of knowledge of the woman to whom he had been married for three years.  He knew nothing of her immense creativity and lesbian sexuality that had taught her to long for a passionate sexual relationship. Much worse, however, was the tragedy of Alexis’s emotional isolation that prevented his interest in her inner life.  He too was a victim of social circumstances that dictated he marry against his sexual preference. 

Some early comments:

• "The expert translation of this almost Gothic story lifts the veil on the place where environment meets the psyche, on women’s sensuality and wit. A gift of Portuguese women writing to the English reader." Lisa Katz, translator of Look There: Selected Poems of Agi Mishol.
• “Monique, part of an earlier feminine epistolary tradition, refines the genre . . . [yet] subverts the traditional plot of seduction and betrayal by departing from evoking a sentimental response in the reader …. Monique’s Creole background contributes to a sense of displacement that follows her throughout her life.” Isabel Morais, Macau Inter-University Institute.
• “Luisa Coelho courageously achieves what Marguerite Yourcenar never could.   . . . Monique faced a world where women were condemned to disguise themselves to obtain access to freedom. . . . Coelho’s creation of Monique's inner life surpasses Yourcenar’s representation of Alexis’s.” Ana Zanetti, My Books Journal.
• “Monique is an answer to Yourcenar’s classic, Alexis (1929), which remains the paradigmatic work of gay literature in Europe .”  from the “Preface” to the  Portuguese edition of Monique, 2004, by Teresa Almeida, New University of Lisbon.
• “Alexis . . . could not love [a woman] because he could only love his only desire. In contrast, Monique permits herself to be seduced by the intensity of color, by the pleasure of touching, by the occult particularities of her body, by the desire to read. Monique is an homage to French literature” and “confirms . . . that all writing is re-writing, a permanent dialogue with the other or the other text.”  Teresa Almeida, New University  of Lisbon .
• “The leit-motif of this letter . . . [is] feminine discourse in a long, self-conscious, and confidential soliloquy, characteristic of the epistolary genre, bringing to light the intimate universe of a woman.”  Eugenia Leal. New University of Lisbon .
• “[This] outstanding translation of Luisa Coelho’s Monique is required reading for women’s studies, gender studies, comparative literature, Caribbean, colonial and postcolonial studies, cultural studies . . . as well as the general reading public. . . . [A] gem.”  Joyce Zonana, University of New Orleans .

About the Author: Portuguese in nationality, born in Angola , Luisa Coelho holds a PhD in Portuguese Literature from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and has taught at European universities. She has degrees in German Philology and Theories of Political Science, and has published a number of academic articles. Her works of fiction include O canto de amor das baleias (The Love Song of the Whales), 1992; Cavalgar um Raio de Luz (Riding a Beam of Light) 2000; Os espaços do desejo—contos eróticos (The Spaces of Desire:  Erotic Tales (2004); and, as editor, Intimidades—Antologia de contos eróticos femininos portugueses e brasileiros (Intimacies:  An Anthology of Portuguese and Brazilian Women’s Erotic Tales), 2005.  

About the translators: Dolores DeLuise & Maria do Carmo de Vasconcelos are professors of literature at Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY. They are known in their field through publications, national and international conferences, and workshops in literature, translation, literary criticism, and pedagogy. Together they possess a wide-ranging, overlapping knowledge of many Western European languages, film theory, theater, philology, art history, women’s studies, and gender studies.