The Persistence of the Sacred in the Contemporary Female Narrative of FormationFour Texts by Giovanna Rivero¹

This text analyzes four narratives by Bolivian writer Giovanna Rivero through the lens of what we understand as a “narrative of the uncanny”: one that employs elements and techniques of the fantastic genre without necessarily delving into the supernatural. In this type of narrative, the emergence of the uncanny takes the form not of a “rupture in reality” –as with the supernatural– but of epiphanies, which allow for a deeper exploration of the folds of reality while also marking processes and milestones in the growth and development of the protagonists. These milestones of growth engage with archetypes, symbols, and rites that evoke a nostalgia for a sacred worldview in contemporary times. The four texts by Rivero analyzed here illustrate three vital stages in female experience: adolescence (in the novel 98 segundos sin sombra, 2014); motherhood (in the short stories “Pasó como un espíritu” and “Regreso,” 2015); and old age (in the story “Cuando llueve parece humano,” 2020). In all of them, we see how the search for a sense of transcendence guides and shapes –though not always happily– the lives of her characters. The need to explain the actions and processes that make up our life cycle as individuals is common to all human experience, and it also underpins the logic of all narrative, whether fictional or referential. This articulation is grounded in an ancestral psychological function: the search for meaning beyond the immanent or pragmatic. We propose that in Rivero’s narrative, this search for transcendence follows a dual and complementary trajectory, depending on the life stage of her protagonists: it is descending (from heaven to earth, from the divine to the human) and horizontal (from the external to the internal, from the other to the self).