The great college celebration of the book is back. Two years and two months after the start of a pandemic that knew no distinction of gender, race or class, the book as that social warp, that object of resistance, will once again be the excuse to definitively and collectively recover cultural spaces of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) through the fourteenth edition of the Book and Rose Festival, which will take place in person from April 22 to 24 in the spaces and esplanades of the University Cultural Center (CCU ).
Through its 150 activities and with the participation of 320 publishers, the book and the readers will be able to reactivate the many communicating vessels that the book has with other forms of beauty, such as music, cinema, theater or dance. This was announced this Tuesday by the writer and coordinator of UNAM Cultural Dissemination, Rosa Beltrán, at a press conference, accompanied by Anel Pérez, director of UNAM Literature; Socorro Venegas, director of UNAM Books; Imelda Martorell, Coordinator of Universo de Letras, and Guadalupe Nettel, director of the University Magazine.
The edition will be titled “On the road”, Beltrán announced, regarding the 100th anniversary of the famous book by beatnik Jack Kerouac. The choice of theme, he said, is “also due to the fact that we are all on the road, especially now, after the pandemic, on the road of resistance, of recovering experiences, of memory; but many are also on the way because we are living in a time of migration and exile, which is something that defines our historical era”, reflected Beltrán in the presentation of the meeting whose two most recent editions took place in virtuality.
“There is something in books that allows us to survive, that allows us to transcend and remember,” he said. “That this Feast of the Book and the Rose takes place two years and two months after a pandemic is also a particular occasion for celebration. We are going to be meeting in person, we are going to talk about books, about authors and authors. We are going to have workshops, exhibitions. The memory will be very present too”.
It will also be an opportunity to evoke the 1988 Cervantes Prize winner, Carlos Fuentes, 10 years after his death, whose tributes will be enriched with a photographic exhibition in the lobby of the Sala Nezahualcóyotl under the curatorship of the Carlos Fuentes Chair of Hispanic American Literature.
Likewise, the coordinator of UNAM Culture advanced, the 90 years of Elena Poniatowska will be celebrated, whose tribute will be the opening of the meeting. “This is going to have a particular format, which is the one she requested, we agreed on it. It will be a conversation with young university students from all UNAM campuses, who will bear witness to her experience in the pandemic. A bit in the manner of ‘The Night of Tlatelolco’, Elena has asked us to dialogue with these young people, because although it is true that we all live through the pandemic, each one lived it differently”.
Others honored or evoked will be the 1998 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, José Saramago, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, and Marcel Proust, a century after his death, as well as Virgina Woolf, Almudena Grandes, Sandro Cohen, Francesca Gargallo and Álvaro Uribe, as well as fundamental publications of universal letters, such as “Ulysses”, by James Joyce, and “Trilce”, by César Vallejo.
Among the pens and minds invited to this reunion fair will be the Salvadoran Marcela Zamora, the Cuban Darío Alemán, the Peruvian Gabriela Wiener, the Afro-Japanese Jumko Ogata and the Mexicans Yásnaya Aguilar and Brenda Navarro, as well as the Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela and the Spanish poet Luis Garcia Montero.
Among the activities of the edition, the dialogue “Crossing borders: representation of migration in contemporary literature” stands out, with the participation of Brenda Navarro, Emiliano Monge and Alexandra Saavedra; the discussion “On the road: writing and resistance”, by Gabriela Wiener and Robert-Juan Cantavella, presented by Guadalupe Nettel; the table and reading aloud “The comic hour of the politically incorrect”, with the participation of Morris Berman, Sandra Burgos and Andrés Torres Scott; as well as the discussion “Memory, imagination and resistance”, with Silvia Molina and Anamari Gomís, presented by Daniela Tarazona.
“Literature and poetry can be windows to the world that we are waiting for, a more humane world, the one that distances the horsemen of the apocalypse, disease, war, death. I think that, for all these reasons and because we have not met in such a long time, this party means a face-to-face hug, recognizing each other”, concluded the UNAM Culture coordinator.
Check the complete program of the Feast of the Book and the Rose in this league.