New Portuguese Letters

<p class=ql-align-justify><em>New Portuguese Letters</em> is one of the great works of modern women's literature. This erotic lyrical and profound novel of women's experience is the product of a creative alliance among three writers all feminists all named Maria all mothers all educated by nuns.</p><p class=ql-align-justify> </p><p class=ql-align-justify>The Three Marias take as their inspiration the seventeenth-century European classic <em>Letters of a Portuguese Nun</em> five passionate missives supposedly written by Sister Mariana Alcoforado to the soldier-lover who had deserted her. These modern Marias weave tales poems and meditations around the myths and reality of contemporary women's lives a text that still engages readers today. </p><p class=ql-align-justify> </p><p class=ql-align-justify>When it first appeared the book was banned and the authors were arrested and charged with obscenity and abuse of freedom of the press. Today <em>New Portuguese Letters</em> remains as fresh and challenging as when the cause of the Three Marias first lit a flame of international protest by women and for women.</p><p><br></p>