Books by Jean Franco

The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values. This book charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard.

Analyzing the conditions under which dehumanizing cruelty came to be used by states and rogue groups in Latin America, Jean Franco argues that acts of extreme cruelty and the ways they are rationalized are defining features of modernity.

This 1976 book was the first full-length study in English of the Peruvian poet, Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938). Franco explores limitations on the poet's freedom of speech, and goes on to explore Vallejo's later poetry, which gestures towards the tentative nature of humanity and civilisation that gives the poetry its abiding relevance.

A key participant in all the major debates in Latin American studies - beginning with the "boom" period of the 1960s and continuing through debates on ideology and discourse, Marxism, mass culture, and postmodernism - the author is recognised for her feminist critique of Latin American writing. This book offers a selection of her essays.