Macarena Soto
Madrid, 15 apr. The Ecuadorian writer Andrea Crespo speaks from the desire to explain her society and try to “rectify” the “ignorance” that exists of the literature made in the country, on a tour of Spain together with four other authors with “the surreal and utopian company to cross the pond to read poems”.
In an interview with EFE in Madrid, where this week she and her colleagues María Paulina Briones, Jorge Martillo, Eduardo Varas and Ernesto Carrión held readings, debates and colloquiums on Ecuadorian literature, she defends the “diversity and strength” of the letters of his country.
The tour, promoted by the Cadáver Exquisito publishing house with the support of the Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Innovation of Ecuador (IFCI), aims to highlight Ecuadorian authors and publicize their work among Spanish readers, bookstores and distributors.
“It is very important, it is a different case from publishing in a Spanish publishing house, this is an Ecuadorian independent publishing house, for us it was not about authors who publish in Spain going on this tour, but rather that the publishing house itself can show what it it’s done there,” he says.
In this sense, he points out that “it is important to make this trip back” to Spain, with whom there is “a close relationship”, to “come to show the ecosystem” from which Ecuadorian letters drink.
A “VIBRANT” LITERATURE WRITTEN “IN RAGE”
Crespo hopes that from the tour that has taken them to Madrid and Barcelona they can “find a reader who is going to read a book and connect.”
“Seeing this label, getting to know the catalogue, knowing that there are things that move there, it’s a bit to open the door and realize that all this diversity is there,” he highlights.
The poet and narrator believes that the work of the writers of her generation is born from “rage” and gives rise to a literature “with strength”, that “is not due to anyone and is not afraid” and that can also raise positive issues to the fact of being unknown.
Crespo criticizes that Ecuador is “the only country in Latin America without a national reading plan”, something that “harms” the authors but also reduces “opportunities” for society.
“We also need to tell ourselves our own history, because Ecuador is a country that has a bad archive, we have not had a national story and there are writers who take great moments in history and begin to tell them from other places and that is important,” he says.
THE PROBLEMS OF ECUADORIAN LITERATURE
The author analyzes the current situation of literature in her country and regrets that the writers are “totally unknown” outside their borders.
“No Ecuadorian writer who has published there is known here (in Spain), that tells you a lot about our market dynamics,” he says.
In turn, he criticizes that there is “this colonial vision that Spain still has to validate you through the publication” and that Spanish and Ecuadorian letters cannot be “looked at horizontally.”
Despite everything, he celebrates that his country’s literature is “very diverse”, with a “vein of chronicles, realism, fantasy…” and “above all poetry”, mostly coming from the city of Guayaquil, the second in the country.
“It is a port and a lot is produced, especially poetry, we have to break the problems of national reading, distribution and the fact of being great unknown in the region,” he asserts.
For this, the Exquisite Corpse tour “tries to correct” these challenges: “the important thing is the gesture, these days among ourselves we say that we are crossing the pond to read poems, it is a completely surreal company, but very concrete, we are taking books of poetry simply so that our voice touches another”. EFE
msh/lar/lab
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