Women writers of Spanish America : an annotated bio-bibliographical guide /

The subtitle gives a false impression of this work's inclusiveness, since biographical facts are not given for a large percentage of the authors, nor are bibliographical information or annotations for an equally large percentage of the titles. Marting excuses herself for these omissions because of the large number of authors and titles listed. Other limitations result from her decision to gather titles from the National Union Catalog, rather than from a bibliographic utility such as OCLC; by closing an author's entry when writing of the annotation was finished (e.g., in 1982), thereby excluding works written after that date; and by restricting the titles listed to those held by North American libraries. The title gives no indication that US writers are also included (if they write primarily in Spanish), or that only women who wrote ``published works of creative literature'' are listed, thereby omitting writers one might expect to find. These limitations detract from the value of the book for all but libraries with very specific Hispanic interests or women's studies programs. It will be useful for those libraries because it brings together women authors of the Americas who write in Spanish and the majority of their creative literature works. Other libraries will be better served by works that give a more thorough introduction to the topic (e.g., Contemporary Women Authors of Latin America, ed. by Doris Meyer and Margarite Fernandez Olmos, CH, Dec '83).-D.R. Brown, DePaul University