Griselda Gambaro (1928 - ...) is a playwright, novelist and short story writer. She was born in La Boca, Buenos Aires, to parents who had emigrated there from Genoa, Italy. She grew up speaking Italian and Spanish and started reading Italian and Spanish literature at an early age. In the 1970s, while the Dirty War was raging in Argentina (1973-1986) and thousands of the country’s citizens were being disappeared, Gambaro and her family fled to Spain. By this point, her novel Ganarse la muerte had already been banned by the military junta. Gambaro’s theatre is political. It follows in the tradition of nineteenth-century Argentinian drama, targeting passivity in the face of oppression, violence and power. Her linguistic style comes from a mixture of her own literary voice with borrowings from Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Ruben Dario, as well as newspaper clippings and even children’s games, which she uses as coded comments on the political situation in Argentina.

Gambaro is a representative voice of contemporary Latin American women’s writing. Through her diverse works, she has succeeded in interpreting a society in crisis and commenting on relationships within the Argentinian political system and relations between the sexes.

She has written a total of 29 plays, 10 novels, and a number of short stories and books for children and young adults.

 

A short list of her plays:
Information for foreigners [Información para extranjeros], Saying yes [Decir Si], The camp [El campo], Furius Antigone[Antigona Furiosa].

 

Good, good! We finally got it right! With patience, everything comes to you! (Saying yes)