“What I always wanted to write was a chronicle, but I wanted it to have literary flights. Exactly what the teachers told me not to do, I wanted to do,” it was with that idea that the writer Fernanda Melchor was launched in 2002 in the investigation from the case of lynching of a rapist in a remote town in his native Veracruz, whose history later ended up forming part of his book of chronicles This is not Miamipublished, along with his first novel False Harein 2013.
11 years after those first publications and already considered one of the most influential authors in the world so far this year 21st centuryaccording to The New York Times, for his novel Hurricane Season (2017)Fernanda Melchor performed during the 6th edition of the UNAM International University Book Fair (Filuni)where he told anecdotes and gave writing tips to dozens of young people who gathered to listen to him talk about his experience as a chronicler.
“I specialized in journalism and I did my social service at the Historical Archive and Library of Veracruz. There was a large collection of old magazines and books from cultured families who read only French books in Veracruz during the 18th century. So it was full of books on spiritualismlike Allan Kardec in the first editions, super crazy things,” said the writer, who spoke about some of her influences, such as the anthology of Mexican crimes, El libro rojo, by Manuel Payno and Vicente Riva Palacio.
“I spent my time reading and all the time I wanted to reconstruct (the story), but all that was always in tension with what was happening in Veracruz. I think that influenced the moment I wanted to write about something, and you can see that in a book like Aquí no es Miami, which goes back all the time, to the seventies and sixties, to times when I was a child and I didn’t remember. I was trying to establish genealogies and narrative paths towards those stories,” added the writer.
Read a lot and don’t pretend
After talking about how some of the events came about, chronicles that he has written and to affirm that in order to be able to write “You have to get over the fear of going out” and ask in the streets for topics that may be interesting, something that, in his experience, the academy did not give him, Fernanda Melchior She was questioned by young writers, who see her as an example and an inspiration.
One of them asked her about the way she manages to integrate into the communities she talks about, since in her texts there is a great familiarity with what is being told, to which she replied that Her work is more about participation as an observer.similar to what the ethnography.
Since I’m already there, I know that I’m exerting a kind of influence, but I still go for it: and if you have to dance cumbia, you have to dance cumbia, and if you have to smoke weed, you have to smoke weed.
“I don’t pretend to be an eye that sees things, but it is invisible. What I do is that I have a note of what I am doing well and on the other hand what I am feeling, that is how I put things together,” explained the author, who confesses that she has not written a chronicle for a long time, although she has not lacked the desire, but for the increasingly situation violent in Veracruz has decided explore reality from fictionas it was in his book Hurricane Season, inspired by a true crime.
Another assistant asked Melchor about what is needed to become a writer and if it was necessary to follow a career focused in literatureShe replied that Studying literature or journalism does not necessarily make people writers.but rather the readings.
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“What I advise is to read a lot. Elmer Mendoza He said that To write a novel you have to read 50 novels, I think you should read 500. You have to read like crazy, even the bad stuff and become obsessed, because You even learn from trashy literature“, he concluded.