Guadalajara.- Four unpublished texts of the mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1998) will be presented at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL)which have been transcribed and published in the book Short novels and other texts by Elena Garroedited by Ediciones Del Lirio and the Benemérita Universidad de Puebla (BUAP).
This is the second volume of the collection Elena’s notebookswhich includes three short novels and a film script by the author of Memories of the future (1963). The collection aims to bring the writer’s personal archive, which is under the protection of Princeton University in the United States, to the greatest number of readers.
“Are stories Perhaps they were written (because the original manuscripts are not dated) between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1970s. Above all, three of the stories that we publish now are located in a post-revolutionary Mexico, since in the environments narrated Garro “You can see a nation boiling towards modernity,” he explains. Marcos Daniel Aguilareditor of bookin an interview with The Sun of Mexico.
“What helps us determine the date a little more is the mention of the political upheaval, in which the hegemonic party, the PRI, is having disputes with a nascent opposition, in addition to the international political conflict between the Western bloc and the world. Soviet”.
Taking into account this contextthe editor mentions that these narratives must have been created during the times when Elena Garrohad deep political activity among intellectual groups.
Such participation would have consequences such as the unjustified accusation of having directed the Student movement of 1968 and expose the intellectuals linked to the movement after the October 2 massacrewhich ended up exiling her from the country.
“Within these stories there is an element that links them with the political activity of the same Garrowhich is a sense of political conspiracy that some characters in these stories experience, there is always a hint of betrayal in them.
“This, when compared with his biography, makes one think that they were stories nourished by several anecdotes from a Mexico that he had to live in and in which various positions were being debated, not only between political parties. politiciansbut between groups intellectuals“says the editor, who describes the cut of these writings of a marked “social realism”, in which “fantasy is somehow present in Elena Garro’s metaphorical use of language”.
GREAT CREATIVE POWER
With an introductory text by Olivia Teroba, the book It includes the transcription of the manuscripts, as well as the images of their originals. Daniel Aguilar mentions that one of the novels is notably unfinished, but affirms that reading it still allows us to know the plot well and learn more about the narrative of Elena Garro.
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“That we can still publish unpublished textstells us that we are facing a Mexican author with great creative and production power that did not stop over time, at least from the 1930s to 1990. By seeing the manuscripts we can not only get to know that work, but also an author who did not settle in a single literary genrepassed between one genre and another, since we have found folders, in which on the same paper there is a story, the notes for a next novel or novels short ones followed by poems,” he concludes.
Elena’s notebooksin their first installment they published in book Recovered stories of Elena Garroand will soon publish a set of theater plays.