[In the following review, Hintz addresses the principal purpose of El coloquio de las perras.]

Rosario Ferré's most recent book, El coloquio de las perras, is a collection of eight essays on the general topic of feminist literary criticism. The first essay, which lends the volume its title, is a fictional presentation of Ferré's personal opinions on feminist literary criticism. The second is a statement on the status of feminist literary criticism during the last decade. The remaining pieces are written autodiegetically as an explanation of Ferré's own feminist narrative.

“El coloquio de las perras” is a parody of Cervantes's exemplary novel El coloquio de las perras in which Ferré expresses her personal opinions concerning Puerto Rican feminist literature and Latin American feminist literature in general. She speaks with a respected and resonant voice in the wilderness of feminist literary criticism as she combats not only the treatment that women authors receive at the hands of male literary critics but also as she battles against the segregation of literary criticism into opposing male and female camps.

Ferré's colloquy is a skillful combination of mimetic and diegetic narrative that presents the theme of the intricacies of Latin American feminist literature and its criticism. She is known to write for friends and for people who are close to her. Thus, El coloquio de las perras is dedicated to two of her compatriots in literary criticism, Ani Fernández and Jean Franco. She has even linked the dedication of the opening essay to the names of its protagonists, Fina and Franca. Through their voices she clearly states her belief that themes are the only difference between masculine and feminine literature. Literature is built on words, and these building blocks have no gender. Ferré's goal in writing El coloquio de las perras is to unite the literary world into a more exemplary and tolerant medium of communication for all languages.