Domestic Labor in Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema

This volume explores the character of the domestic worker in twenty-first centuryLatin American cinema and analyzes how recent filmic representations of the housemaidquestion the marginalization of domestic servants, in particular women, by making them thecenter of their narratives, their families, and society.The essays inthis book posit the female domestic workeras an emergent subjectivity, a complex character who problematizes and contests the hierarchicalpower structures within the family dynamics and new socioeconomic orders found incontemporary Latin America. Readers will find a variety of representations across the continent as well as transnational commonalities of the cinematic figure and role of the housemaid, including thenegotiation of a multilayered politics of affection in the framework of prevalent paternalism,and the complex and contradictory dynamic between private and public spaces, where domesticpaid labor occupies a central role in maintaining gender, class, and ethnic inequalities.