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When one speaks of Latin American slavery as an institution, there is a distinct feeling of incompleteness that greets even the most thorough and wary critic. From a literary angle in particular, the dearth of voices that have survived history in order to narrate their ordeals is noteworthy. While a precious few slaves did indeed learn how to read and write, the literacy that was withheld from the majority served to maintain their experiences far from the written page. The trails that their lives did leave are glimpsed in commercial and judicial discourses that evidence their status as "productive" possessions and, occasionally, as veritable subjects fighting for their most basic of legal rights.
Nevertheless, the corporeal punishments inflicted upon slaves in Latin America were not simply absorbed without rebuttal; their bodies themselves "spoke" eloquently of these wounds. It is in the taboo topic of black sexuality, moreover, that this past corporeal damage can be both expressed and subsequently healed through a renewed female subjectivity in Mayra Santos-Febres's novel Fe en disfraz (2009). Although the protagonist Fe Verdejo lacks the historical experience of these slaves, her study of their narratives and ritualized "dressing the part" combine to forge an erotic connection to these voices that provides a fountain of feminine subjectivity. The final manifestation of this bodily interaction reveals a veritable corporeal narrative where the once marginal object adopts a discursive centrality through taboo itself.
