As a reader, I distrust labels more and more. I like it better when I catch a glimpse of a hybrid, when I don’t really know what it is and I don’t know where it fits”.
Selva Almada, writer
The Hispanic-American narrative has changed very radically in the last decade. There are several factors and ways in which this change in hegemony has taken place. Today, it is no longer a glimpse but a reality that Hispanic American literature, at least that published in Latin America, is ruled by female voices.
To define the most important changes, this Wednesday in Madrid the writers Rosa Beltrán, Selva Almada, Cristina Rivera Garza and Brenda Navarro met around the discussion “Narrative in Spanish, state of the art”, moderated by Alexandra Saavedra, coordinator of the Carlos Fuentes Chair of Hispanic-American Literature, as part of the first Meeting of Ibero-American Letters, organized by the Center for Mexican Studies UNAM-Spain and the Department of Literature and Reading Promotion, also of the highest house of studies.
Two contexts and two ways of writing
Rosa Beltrán, also coordinator of UNAM Culture, highlighted two main and very different lines about what is currently being written in Europe in Spanish and what is happening in Latin America.
While in Spain a revisionist zeal persists about the Civil War, in Latin America it is not surprising that violence is a recurring theme, especially in literature written by women, a literature of great experimentation with literary forms, with a narrative based on in reality, although without being purely realistic.
Hence, themes such as the essay or the documentary, without adhering to the dogmas of pure genres but with hybridizations between the ways of narrating, are powerful ways to tell stories in this region of the world. “And yes, it has to do with violence, from violence in general, state violence and of course violence against women,” he said.
Women’s literature for at least eight years, he reflected, “has become very powerful also for reasons that have to do with female readers,” which govern the interests of small publishers, but also the interests of the market. “That is to say, the market is always seen as the enemy, but not necessarily, it is also the one that sets the tone for what the trends are on the cultural horizon.”
The condemnation of gender
Cristina Rivera Garza considered that, for the sake of narrative production, the epithets of genre and subgenre have been eliminated in books, that is, the borders between fiction and essay, horror, speculation and other parallel but well-separated constructions have been dissolved. such as water and oil, which were common until recent decades.
“I remember that the question of gender was something that simply did not mix with the literary, it was a question that was not asked, that did not exist and whoever dared to ask it was easily accused of impoverishing the literary discussion, because the literary was far beyond pedestrian issues, of the body in everyday life”, pointed out the 2021 Villaurrutia Award.
Another of the elements that are now more easily embraced from the vocation of writing, added the also author of Nobody will see me cry, is social activism. In this vein, she announced that she will publish a new book this year, in the fall, that is tied to these big questions:
“It has to do with the emphasis that authors from very different traditions in Spanish have placed on the relationship between body and territory, something that I have called ‘geological writings’”. And he added: “I think we are increasingly aware of various forms of the end of the world and the very possibility of extinction. That has made us ask ourselves more and more questions that have to do with the body, the territory and nature”.
The reasons for the change
For Brenda Navarro, so far in the 21st century, “an official narrative in transition (…) we believe that we are generating a homogeneous corpus by using the Spanish language as such, but in reality there are interesting nuances between our countries.”
He agreed that a fundamental element of this thematic and stylistic transformation in Latin American literature is its own readers, who read, recommend each other and generate communicating vessels. “Without being friends, without knowing each other, we go and talk about the text, that breaks with the compadrazgo of certain systems of the past.”
At least for the Argentine case, Selva Almada pointed out, one of the resounding changes in the market and in the way of narrating was precisely an economic crisis, that of 2001. That crisis “allowed the appearance of many independent publishers and that was a return 180 degrees to how and what was being published”.
Finally, Beltrán, who is a member of the Mexican Academy of Language, said that the academies were left behind several years ago. “The programs in the universities maintain a discourse that is not current and does not respond to what is happening, while the field of readers goes through underground rivers, navigating and building their own currents (…) I have always had my doubts about what normative Spanish is and if this should even exist”.