Congratulations, pricey Marta!–Lisa
The writer, who simply revealed her newest novel, has been a reference for a lot of Puerto Rican writers within the final 15 years
A report by Andrea Rodés for Al Día.
Her identify shouldn’t be but well-known in the USA, however for a lot of younger Puerto Ricans who started writing within the final 15 years, Marta Aponte Alsina is a reference level.
Writer of quite a few novels and essays, Aponte has created a brand new means of rewriting the Caribbean past the stereotypes and clichés — that of a area excessively sexualized and much from the mental — along with giving visibility to literature that lives beneath the shadow of the nice Latin American markets, resembling Argentina and Mexico.
“My curiosity within the Caribbean stems from a sense I’ve had for a very long time, which is that of residing in a sort of cage,” stated the writer at a roundtable dialogue held in the course of the Barcelona Latin American literature competition KM América.
Aponte, who simply revealed her newest novel, The Comfortable Dying of William Carlos Williams (Candaya, 2022) explains that the Caribbean id has all the time carried the burden of being a border area between the insular Caribbean and the continental coast, managed by the U.S., and that’s mirrored in her work.
“It’s maybe that sense of confinement that leads me to different readings and fabulations in regards to the Caribbean that I want to write and browse,” she defined.
To this sense of insular isolation, there may be the cultural fragmentation brought on by colonialism.
In The Comfortable Dying of William Carlos Williams the Puerto Rican writer evokes the lifetime of the enigmatic Puerto Rican painter Raquel Helena Hobeb and her son, an American poet and physician, whom the novel’s title honors.
“A lot of my novels often start with a letter or message from a lady writer whom the narrator respects very a lot and follows in her footsteps and solutions the decision,” she explains.
Within the novel, the reader accompanies her on a journey that can take her from Argentina, to Central America, by means of Ohio, to Rutherford, New Jersey, in the USA, the place her son used to reside.
Right here, the writer fuses recollections of her personal life with biographical materials about William Carlos Williams, recognized for his poetic work “Paterson,” to discover themes she is aware of nicely — the hyperlinks of Puerto Rican tradition within the U.S., the forgotten voices of girls, the home realm, the gaze of inside exile. But in addition a extra subjective theme — the bond that’s established between a mom and her baby.
“A bond that’s often problematic in a method or one other, as a result of there’s a energy relationship there and there can be an extra of affection or rejection, which marks the persona and conduct of each,” she defined in an interview after the speak with EFE. Because of this, she argues, “it’s not as pure a relationship because it appears, a minimum of in our society, many frictions can come up from it.”
Marta Aponte Alsina is without doubt one of the most excellent authors in Puerto Rican literature. She has revealed the novels Angélica furiosa (1994), El cuarto rey mago (1996), Vampiresas (2004), Sexto sueño (2007, Nationwide Novel Award of the Pen Membership of Puerto Rico), El fantasma de las cosas (2009), Sobre mi cadáver (2012) and Mr. Inexperienced (2013). Inexperienced (2013); the books of brief tales La casa de la loca (2001) and Fúgate (2005); and the essays “Somos islas” (2015) and “PR3 Aguirre” (2018), amongst many others.
She has been editor of quite a few books and magazines, such because the anthology Narraciones puertorriqueñas revealed by Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho. In 2014, the Ladies’s and Gender Research Program on the College of Puerto Rico awarded her the Nilita Vientós Gastón Chair. Cristina Rivera Garza included her in a choice of 12 important ladies authors of Latin America, revealed in Writer’s Weekly journal in 2018.