The south american magical realism celebrates the triumphs of the colombian Emma Reyes childhood memories. With the proviso that the memories do not seem to be so very fictitious, but, on the contrary completely biographical.
But take a figure as señorita Carmelita. She is not a nun, but living and working in the convent where Emma and her sister, and eventually ends up as their guardian abandoning them. Senora Carmelita is so insanely thick that she can barely move. She has what Emma calls the ”sash” – I guess it is the issue of shingles – and all are agreed that, when skärpets ends meet is Carmelitas hour battles.
the solution is that with the help of chocolate, pastries and compotes make sure she never reduces in magomfång. This could have been a figure of a magical realist like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Juan Rulfo. The fact is that Marquez was one of the accelerators that saw that Emma Reyes childhood memories at all was written and published.
The English introduktören Daniel Alarcóns preface opens also the Swedish translation. Here he tells us about tillkomsthistorien.
first, hesitant to write down the barndomsberättelser she was fascinated by the surroundings with at parties and other gatherings. But a good friend suggested that she would write them as a letter instead, to reduce the pressure.
So it was, but no one wanted to give out Reyes lyrics. In 2003, she died, 84 years old. It was not until ten years later that a small konstförlag in Bogotá, accepted and published. The downside of the industry fell silent as soon as they read the book and instead started to shelf and recommend it.
truly an extraordinary life story, told from a child’s perspective. Reyes was determined to retain the small misunderstandings and conflicting memories, which thus becomes a surprisingly successful stylistic devices in themselves.
Rarely has one come so close to the extreme poverty, which is when the Reyes remember Colombia in the 1920s: corrupt, violent and characterized by hideous divisions based on class. The first memories stem from Bogotá, when Emma is like that three, four years old. She lives with her a few years older sister, a boy she may never know the name of – He is called the ”Lusen” – and a young woman with large dark hair named Maria.
It is the reader who gets to put the puzzle together lakunerna in the story. You will soon guess that Maria is the mistress to a high ranking official, and that the children are their offspring. But, as I said, guesses. Baby Emma knows nothing about this and the adult Emma holding back any speculation.
, windowless dump at the dump in Bogotá moved we with the childhood time to a small town in the hinterland, where Maria will receive services as the proprietor of a chocolate shop, and through some turmoil to the convent where Emma will grow up in the catholic church, the nurture and admonition of the lord. Or as we would say nowadays: who sadistically treated child labour without pay.
The adult Emma Reyes writes these letters from childhood when she lives in Paris, seems as an artist and is the obvious focal point of the Latin american intellectual in exile. It is a fantastic book where the two narrators is pushed behind the eyes; the crowding of care to console the other.
