Sustainable Development Goals in Women’s Literature

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.