Alicia Partnoy

Alicia Partnoy (* 1955 in Bahía Blanca) is an Argentine human rights activist and writer.

Partnoy was enrolled at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, as the junta in 1976 staged a coup to power under the leadership of General Jorge Rafael Videla. On January 12, 1977 she was arrested along with her two year old daughter and thrown in a secret prison in the army. During the process of national reorganization, she was tortured for a long time again and again. From this concentration camp, she was later transferred to the prison of Bahía Blanca.

Mid-1979 Partnoy was to immediately leave the country only under the condition released from prison. She went to the USA where her daughter and her husband were waiting for them. In 1985 she made ​​her debut with her first novel La Escuelita ( The Little School ) very successful. In it she described her experiences during her detention and those of her fellow sufferers, who were less fortunate and were gone.

Partnoy lives with her family in Los Angeles, California and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.

Works (selection)

• The discourse of solidarity in testimonial " poemarios " from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Dissertation, University of Washington, DC in 1997.
• The little school. Tales of disappearance and survival in Argentina. Virago Press, London, 1988, ISBN 0-86068-929-8.

• You can not drown the fire. Latin American women writing in exile. Cleis Press, San Francisco, Calif. 1988, ISBN 0-939416-16-6.