Writing and reading in times of pandemic - the window

Writing and reading in times of pandemic - the window

By Lainerys Carbonell

On writing and reading at the time of Pandemia, the members of the Casa 2022 Award novel jury reflected on Thursday, January 27,.From multiple looks and contexts they analyzed the effects of the health emergency caused by COVID-19 in the ways of narrating and literary consumption in stages such as Chile, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

For Chilean narrator and editor Claudia Apablaza the pandemic prevented direct contact between writers, her work and the public.In his speech he narrated part of the situation lived in his country following the epidemiological process.Editorials and closed schools, fear.The loss, in a few cases, of writing spaces, of space marketing spaces, of editorial work.According to his words, as a direct effect of COVID-19 literature to accommodate the difficult context.

In the Manuel Galich Hall of the Casa de las Américas, Apablaza read for the attendees a text written after the first month of isolation and that from individuality could well describe the collective fear:

“Lenses, double mask (…) clothes that cover my whole body.I leave my house, I avoid my neighbors (...) I cry very strong - some old man needs anything - nobody responds (...) I go out, I look for a trade, where there are no queues (...) someone sneezes and run (...) I arrivedTo the portal of the building, I take off my shoes (...) I enter the shower with clothes (...) I change clothes, I look in the mirror, I open my mouth very large and not shout ”.

Escritura y lectura en tiempos de pandemia – La Ventana

Similarly, Ecuadorian poet, narrator and editor Santiago Vizcaíno said that with COVID-19 his nation lived one of the most brutal confinements in Latin America, together with a complex political process.

This period of obligatory imprisonment served as inspiration and found in everyday stories, mostly told by women, about what the health emergency was implying, who gave life to his book of stories El Ángel de la Pes.

During the course of the table on the narrative of the Vizcaíno region he read, of the book himself the story "A enjoyment close to death", which tells what has been lived in this period by a woman who must take care of her mother with Alzheimer's.

From Puerto Rico came the experience of the narrator and journalist Mayra Montero through a video.For Puerto Rican, writing always needs confinement, so the last two years were not so difficult to cope with."What I would never write on this issue," he confessed in the audiovisual material.

He said that during this time he has stayed working as a columnist, while continuing to write a novel set in Cuba, which includes two epochs 1956 and 1966.

For its part, the Cuban narrator Dazra Novak stressed that this pandemic stage caused in the Antillean nation the necessary jump to the technological, which has favored the publication, commercialization and dissemination of books in digital format.“As a negative element, this process has shown us, how dependent we are of digital devices.We must be able to take the best that technology gives us and discard the bad, ”he said.

He added that this time of being at home, has shown that neither reading stops, nor writing.

Although in these last two years he did not write, he shared with those present a fragment of his novel Chérie, with which he won the Italo Calvino 2020 award and fictions the life of the Cuban painter Rocío García.

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