Writers’ Day: get to know the Map of Peruvian Writers and the women who mark the passage of our literature

The history of Peruvian literature written by women has always had an extra level of complexity: collecting their texts, since they are sometimes unpublished works and others of artisanal, limited or non-preserved edition. Reconstructing that history is a battle against the the status quo, oblivion and moths, and those who try to recover the memory of female writing from past historical stages know it well. So that the same does not happen in the present, a group of Peruvian writers gathered in the space known as Comando Plath, embarked on the task of building a Peruvian Writers Map.

In its first stage, the project brings together 25 contemporary writers from different regions of Peru, but they plan to collect at least 200 in this space. For this, they still need to expand funding, so the support of other institutions will be essential. . One of those responsible for the research and editing of the project is the poet and narrator Becky Urbina. We talked to her about it.

What is the most difficult part of putting together a chronology of our writers?

Access to information and bibliography. For a long time, Peruvian writers have been relegated from the public space and have not had the same opportunity as writers to publish and disseminate their work. Many published in short runs, or artisanal editions, books that today are unbearable and have been forgotten. In most cases, his work has not been read with the seriousness it deserved and they were remaining in second place, withdrawn from the canon or the Peruvian literary tradition. This makes research a difficult task, as they cannot be found in libraries, archives, or freely available academic research. On the other hand, we are interested in including writing in native languages, which opens up another path of research, which has been explored discontinuously and which, when talking about it, also appears in the corpus more writers than women. In this we see reflecting the little access to the legal profession on the part of women. In addition, we are interested in incorporating the vast field of orality that opens many more avenues for research.

At this time, when we have more tools to make ourselves visible, what are the greatest challenges that women writers face when fighting against invisibility?

The widespread custom of All male panel, which is sometimes clumsily tried to cover up, for example, by including a “women’s” table as part of a literary cycle in which all other tables are filled with men. This happens everywhere: literary talk cycles, book fairs, colloquia and more. It is also seen in many end-of-year literary accounts, in which women are always the minority. Faced with this, as Comando Plath, we carried out an annual count of books published by women that we entitled: We write, we publish, we exist (2020 edition here). This gives an idea of ​​the large number of publications by female writers that are not disseminated or taken into account in the same way as those of their male peers. With the same spirit, the map of women writers was born, in order to give them that place they deserve, but it is generally denied them, as well as to give readers the opportunity to meet and read these writers.

How many female writers will finally integrate the map and in what period will their names be added? I mean, at some point we can say “map finished”?

There is no definite final number, since as we continue investigating, new names of authors are emerging that we had not had the opportunity to meet. The MEP is a growing and long-term project, since we know that there will always be more women writers to know and spread. We aspire for it to be a sustainable project over time and that it can continuously incorporate all Peruvian writers, but for this we need to find sources of financing that allow us to continue working on the project. This first delivery was made possible thanks to the fact that our project was a beneficiary of the Economic Support Lines for the Culture sector of the Ministry of Culture. An investigation takes time and work, so we hope to find partner institutions that are interested in supporting our project and allowing it to continue to expand continuously.

Here are five writers whose work has been made visible thanks to Peruvian Writers Map:

She is a poet and translator from Italian. Contrary to her contemporaries, whose poetics are associated with an expansive writing with topics related to public space, social criticism and desire, Ana María Gazzolo’s poetry is characterized by conciseness, lyricism and a certain hermetic and melancholic atmosphere. The themes of his poetry are linked to memory, family history and loneliness. She has studied Literature in Lima and Florence, and has a doctorate in Peruvian and Latin American Literature from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. You can learn more about the author by visiting her profile on the Peruvian Writers Map.

She is a poet, translator and teacher. His poetic work responds to the poetry of the oral Quechua world. A poetry that basically springs from a spoken world and represents a collective voice, portraying situations and experiences of Quechua communities, such as migration, cultural exchange and popular imagination. You can learn more about the author by visiting her profile on the Peruvian Writers Map.

He is a poet and a university professor. His poetry is written in Ayacucho Quechua and, over time, it has grown in strength and intensity. Like many other poets in native languages, the discourse on migration is fundamental, since other axes such as loss and loneliness start from there, in addition to the history of looting and repression through which his people have passed. You can learn more about the author by visiting her profile on the Peruvian Writers Map.

It is awajún and wampís, a native of the Amazon. His writing goes between his experiences in this city and his life in Lima. Both spaces are fed and contaminated by a different language and worldview, but always with a critical and nostalgic look. The theme of women is also present in his writing. You can learn more about the author by visiting her profile on the Peruvian Writers Map.

He is a poet, philosopher and essayist. He began his poetic production in the nineties. His poetry is characterized by a polyphonic, fresh and irreverent register, which questions and ironic against power and social conventions. For his poetry, real and fictional characters parade in the middle of a decaying and apocalyptic city. However, in many of his poems he also makes room for contemplation and philosophical exploration. She was the first woman to obtain the Young Poet Award of Peru in 1990. The same year she also won the floral poetry games of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. You can learn more about the author by visiting her profile on the Peruvian Writers Map.