Sustainable Development Goals in Women’s Literature: Voices from Across the Americas

This book analyzes how women’s literary production across the Americas engages with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality. Through critical analyses of novels and short stories by Vita Murrow, Mariana Enriquez, Monalisa Ojeda, Conceição Evaristo and Clarice Lispector, Katherine Anne Porter and Jhumpa Lahiri, Rita Carelli, Sylvia Plath, and Alice Munro, the chapters explore intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, and mental health within diverse cultural contexts.

Bringing together perspectives from North, Central, and South America, the book highlights literature’s role as a transformative tool for social change—revealing systemic inequalities while envisioning alternative futures. Contributors address key SDG 5 targets, including ending discrimination and violence, valuing unpaid care, ensuring participation in decision-making, and advancing reproductive rights and property ownership. The analyses foreground intersectionality and counter-colonial approaches, drawing on critical frameworks from Gender Studies, Subaltern Studies, and Inter-American literary theory.

By situating women’s voices within nearly a century of literary production, Sustainable Development Goals in Women’s Literature: Voices from Across the Americas underscores the enduring relevance of gender equality and its entanglement with other Sustainable Development Goals. It offers scholars and students of literature, cultural studies, and gender studies an interdisciplinary resource for understanding how narratives both reflect and resist patriarchal structures.

Cláudia Maria Ceneviva Nigro has been a Professor at São Paulo State University’s Institute of Biosciences, Languages and Exact Sciences (UNESP/IBILCE), Brazil, since 2000 and became a Senior Lecturer in Literary Criticism in March 2010. She holds a PhD and a master’s degree in Literary Theory, teaching undergraduate courses (English literature, English language, literature, gender, and race), graduate courses (Critical Approaches to Literary Texts), and participating in extension projects. She is a member of three research groups, all registered with the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and leads one of them, focusing on Gender and Race. She is also a member of the International Association of Universities / UNESCO, working with SDG-5. She has published several articles, book chapters, and books, the latest of which is a free e-book titled Decolonizando saberes interseccionados na literatura e na educação.

Débora Spacini Nakanishi is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages at São Paulo State University (UNESP), São José do Rio Preto campus, Brazil. She holds a master’s and PhD in Literature from UNESP, with research focused on English-language literatures and film adaptations. Additionally, she is the author of three books on English language teaching, published by Editora Senac.