* General features of his work

*

Marcela Serrano was born in 1951 in Santiago, Chile. Horacio Serrano daughter of the essayist and novelist Elisa Perez Walker.

1973, on account of the coup, had to meet his exile in Rome, Italy. In 1977 he returned to Chile.

He entered the race of Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Chile in 1976, earning a degree in printmaking in 1983.

In 1994 he was declared winner of the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, for his work that we love We both published in 1991 and the award from the Feria del Libro de Guadalajara (Mexico) to the best American novel written by a woman. Furthermore, the same year won the Municipal Prize of Santiago with the work Lest I forget (1993), the award is the largest of its kind in the southern country.

Some of his works are:

My old life (1995)

The sad women’s shelter (1997)

Nuestra Senora de la Soledad (1999)

A strange world (two stories-2000)

What’s in my heart (2001), the work of the prestigious Premio Planeta finalist.

Farewell Little Women (2004)

La Llorona (2008)

Marcela Serrano is one of the best selling Latin American authors and read.

General characteristics of his work

* 1. Reflection on the Status of Women: When you read Marcela Serrano casts the first impression that his work is a reflection on the feminine condition. All his work is linked by a central axis which may well be called the defense of women and intimate portrait that no man, for obvious reasons, had been accomplished. His work, in a way, we naked and put on the table all our worries, fears, hopes, doubts, disappointments and failures, but also our love and our successes. In this regard says:

“I have no qualms about writing as a woman writes. Instead, stick a shout to tell all please write women than men … Because I think we do have other language.”

For what a stubborn defense of our right to write women differently than our male counterparts, making it clear that their way of thinking about vision differs from the Spanish writer Rosa Montero, for whom being a woman is rather something linked to human specificity, another element such as a biographical aspect or nationality to which she belongs, but that really does not have much weight in literary creation. And to clarify this discrepancy Marcela Serrano says very clearly:

“I defend the female point of view and Rosa Montero. She says she feels closest to any Spanish of his generation of South African woman. I do not: I feel closer to a Moroccan writer Perez-Reverte . And that has to do with the point of view. ”

And I would add, also the look, the sensitivity and even our ideological baggage. Marcela Serrano is quite eloquent in saying that:

“It is impossible not to write from the minority if you’re at it. Imagine apartheid South Africa: a black man could have written from power Always have to write from the sidelines … In this sense, given that history has power were male, the language too … I think the woman writes from space can not. ”

And I would add from space hidden from the anonymity, as if his face was hidden by a veil invisible blurs your vision, you sew the mouth and covers her ears, and yet his cry of distress comes from deep of her womb, to reassert itself as a human being as a woman, lover, wife, friend, worker, even as a citizen of a country that relegates the overpowering, the enslaved and ignorant to recognize when their rights, but it into account when their duties require. Marcela Serrano added, rather crudely by the way,

“There is a certain kind of loneliness that has to do with being born in the space of no power. And this reading serves to mitigate the loneliness.”

And this is where we come to the second point.

* 2. Loneliness: Like many contemporary writers Marcela Serrano explores the metaphysical field and shows her female characters as if they had been cut in an operating room with the finest of scalpels. Thus through his pen discovered the immense loneliness that often surround the human species, regardless of their social, economic, political or religious, but that much more unbearable when you’re a woman. To explain what might be nothing but a mess, Marcela Serrano argues one of his characters in “Farewell Little Women” since before women were accepted without any kind of rebellion the role that had been imposed since before birth paper, written from time immemorial. But now, at least in regard to Western women, we can decide whether or not to accept the dictates of a society and an oppressive Church:- “That’s the difference between Alcott and Little Women in the mine. I think that mandates are not very different: what they were taught to the March sisters is not very different from what he taught me. The difference is in what we do today with these mandates. Today it is an enormous amount of possibilities that were previously off-limits: being professional, going out to earn a living … And that, the ability to earn a living, and has literally changed our life. ”

To reinforce the idea that the mandates imposed on women of the early twenty-first century, are the same as in the mid-twentieth century, Marcela Serrano says:

– “There is one word, obedience. Obedience to which women would subject virtually … Submission to the family, goodness … Each of these roles (mother, daughter, wife …) has a huge load connected with obedience. I was in a convent school in the sixties, and there are entire sections of the Alcott phrases that remind me of my training. That modest and tiny thing from which he had to look at life … and the feminine virtues that always involving humility, lack of ambition … that men who were ambitious was a value, in women, a flaw. feminine virtues to practice: learning to cook, weave, sew … So everything was contained in the small, domestic life … There was a mandate to leave the world. ”

* 3. Politics and Exile

In 1972 his first experience living in exile in France, but was an exile desired, not imposed. Something very different from the exile which he lived to escape the regime of terror imposed by Pinochet in Italy this time. There he met the uprooting, pain, cold and hunger. In this regard Marcela Serrano says:

“Exile. First, before the exile had lived in Paris a year as a student, must have been 68 four years later, when they were all the germs of the May Revolution in the air, and I went with two of my sisters as we learn French. We froze our studies in Santiago and went to live there. It was a fascinating experience, really exciting. We learned French, but also learned many other things. Later I returned to Chile and came the blow. Then I touched Italian exile, we played, one could not decide as a member of a party, and I was an exile in Rome. Rome itself was a privilege. The warmth of the Italians, the reception we did, the solidarity of them was a wonderful thing but we had to live in conditions that I did not even sensed it. I had a life quite “gifted” before that, at my parents, so it was very hard. In the end I came back. ”

And is that Marcela Serrano’s work can not be understood if one leaves aside the political aspect. Reference to the dictatorship, repression, torture, missing persons, to the concentration camps, terror and forced exile who lived thousands of Chileans are immersed throughout his work. The atmosphere of persecution in a generation that lived and grew, it became an adult and not thinking beyond their acute vision Chilean political conflict.

In conclusion would say that Marcela Serrano, Isabel Allende and Laura Restrepo, are the three Latin American novelists with a solid and permanent work in time. Three concerning when considering the current literature in Latin America, and when I make this statement of course do not distinguish between male or female.

We both want us

This work was published in 1993 and in 1994 won the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, one of the most important awards of American literature. It was his first work, at least the first who wrote in a conscious, intended for publication and not filed or forgotten in a drawer gives many of the past. It tells the story of four women friends to each other and life, for various reasons has been removed.

This was the first book I read by Marcela Serrano, and to date remains the most I liked. I think in the other repeats, especially in “Farewell Little Women.” This work, like all his other books, has a feminist accent, it investigates the claims of women and the stereotypes that have been imposed and at the same time showing a type of women who have left behind the tradition grandmothers, who have made their lives a path where the man out to fulfill their reproductive role, little or nothing to do in the world of women and implementation of a select group of women. This is the case of her character Sara. Marcela Serrano integrates the story with the following paragraph:

“Sara was born, raised and lived always among just women.

His father left his mother in the month before birth in the city of Valdivia. He was not seen again. Seven years later he learned of her death and since I had moved to the category of non-existent character, it did not change the fate of anyone. ”

Or the character of Elizabeth:

“I think my obsession with my career and my dedication to it is almost suspicious. Hernan even told me that it is unfeminine. But is that … I get chills the lives of women without their own, they accepted that love was the only reference. ” …

In his book, the man usually goes badly and the criticism being leveled collections are truly corrosive:

“I do not understand why there are so many single women and almost no single men. Mary replied:

* All remarried, Laura, worse with younger women. The market for them is fluctuating, our static. And if you meet one who married someone of your age or who are alone, watch out. Any problems should have. ”

Criticism of the Catholic religion marks the book from the beginning, she has openly acknowledged that long ago broke away from that legacy and does not recognize that they openly atheist

“To her grandmother that she had no name, because not baptized.

* How will this little girl to live without baptism

* Have birth certificate, mother, With this it is enough. ”

Marcela Serrano, like most women who were born in the 50s, and grew up with woddstock, with the revolution of May ’68 and with the great sexual revolution resulting from the pill, scream their right to pleasure and orgasm, scream their right to sexual pleasure free from social and religious subterfuge, something unthinkable for grandmothers who were born 50 years earlier:

“I do not want a society where there is one woman who has not had an orgasm.”

Says one of his female characters, but to reach that conclusion first knew he had to go through the traditional education of all Catholic women: the cult of virginity.

– “You must realize that the traditional Catholic education has one major sin: sex, with a capital.” Virginity was our greatest asset. Almost all the young people pololeabamos then made love. But not to us. There were other women for that. Putas, maids, hairdressers, older women. There was a tacit agreement: the men, yes, we do not. The classic double standard in this society of shit. And the question we zero it. Our way of sexuality was fragmentadisima live. … My course of the school was divided into two: those who knew the tongue kisses and no. ”

This diving female sexuality, denied for over a thousand years to be finally accepted and embraced all that is big and beautiful, takes Marcela Serrano also talk of masturbation and abortion, with no mufflers, assuming a reality that has always wanted to hide.

– “I thought in those developed countries where abortion is not a crime, where the state can avoid that thousands of women worldwide deaths due to hemorrhage people and businesses around these ferocious rich doctors who do the double set of morals. So~ne then with a Public Health able to pick up a problem so dramatic, so everyday, so heartbreaking for each player and dangerous at a time.

And later:

“A country that has no divorce law of abortion and has no right to talk about development!

Finally the book closes with a sentence that I see it saves the whole book:

“” In the end, Ana, “she says with a soft voice, our task, that of us women, is to deliver and close the eyes of the dead. Exactly the key steps of humanity. As if the story really depended on our hands. ”

In conclusion I say that Marcela Serrano is one of my favorite authors, I think even some of his works must have been published. Marcela Serrano I think has been more the result of a well done markerting more than the result of good literature. That does not mean that books like “We want us both”, not a book that is not worth being read. On the contrary, although I recognize that it is not something extraordinary, it is also true that I enjoyed reading it, as is also true that the last book I read her “Farewell Little Women”, I found it quite regularly, to say nothing of “A strange world.” On the contrary “Lest I forget,” I left a good impression, but, again, do not consider it a great author.