La Voz de Galicia – March 12, 2021 →
I don’t know if it’s because we are more sensitive nowadays, or if it has to do with the importance of finding references for the different ways of living in society. The fact is that today it is easier than it was ten years ago to find information about a reality other than your own, or about the experiences of a person whose life story is as relevant as their work.
This week, looking for a documentary about the life of the painter Ángeles Santos, I stumbled by chance on a documentary about Carmen Laforet and her life as a writer. And because Nada is one of those novels that made a difference in my adolescence, and because I must confess that I did not know much about the life of the woman who described emotions I thought no one else felt, I decided to put aside Ángeles Santos for a moment…The thing is that at a moment of the documentary, the Hispanist (and author’s biographer) Roberta Johnson, mentioned one of the phrases that the author said to her: “You must forgive yourself every day”…And for an instant I thought about that phrase, and about how beautiful it would be to have someone who shares it with us when we can’t get out of the rut in which we find ourselves, and about the idea that the sensibility of which I previously spoke, that idea of having references, could be defined in the context of that same phrase…
Unwritten history is filled with untold stories. Looking at my library, I reflect about how complex it was for many female authors to get to publish the stories they wanted to tell. And looking at my mother I think about how difficult it had to be to guide us through a world that did not count her in. I see an unlimited will. And I feel indebted to all of them. Because they are unlimited.
