Our Spanish-language reading group returns for autumn 2023 with Mariana Travacio’s Quebrada, Valeria Tentoni’s El color favorito and Greta García’s Solo quería bailar. Three texts, all written by Spanish-speaking women, yet all with wildly different preoccupations. Quebrada is a novel set in the cliffs above the Argentine pampa and depicts the trials, tribulations and guilt that comes with migration and leaving your home behind. El color favorito is an inquisitive essay, peppered with personal anecdotes so you feel as if you’re conversing with Tentoni herself, which wants to know where writing begins and whether it can truly be mastered. Solo quería bailar is the funniest of the lot, with a no-filter internal monologue that’ll have you saying, ‘I can’t believe she just said that!’ throughout.
How it works
To read the whole book, please order a copy yourself from a shop or library if you can. If you have trouble finding a title, we may be able to lend you a copy. Email Emmanuel Boakye at emmanuel90999@gmail.com for more information. Read the books, then add your thoughts in the comments below. Join us at a meet-up to discuss what we have read. You can be sure of a lively, well-informed discussion.
Where and when
Reading Period:
September 2023 – October 2023
Meet-ups:
The reading group will meet on Monday 23rd October online on Zoom at 19:00 (BST), and a link will be provided upon request if you email emmanuel90999@gmail.com.
El color favorito
About the Book
What does it mean to write? Where does writing begin? In a deeply personal literary essay, interspersed with the elements of an interview, Valeria Tentoni grapples with the ontology of writing. This is a text that marks the evolution of a writer, reflected through memories of her teacher. At the heart of this piece is a fascination and revelling in the indulgence of questions. Its metaphors are challenging (who would think a question is like a jellyfish?) but always working towards a greater end. Truly a must-read: it’s a piece of conversational literary theory whose scent will entice you and have you lost in the labyrinth of its preoccupations.
Sample translation by Emmanuel Boakye
Quebrada
About the Book
Set in a stark landscape of cliffs and precipices high above the Argentine pampa, Mariana Travacio’s Quebrada is a story of people born at the mercy of the elements, trying to search out a better future despite being unable to escape the past. It is a story of the ties of family that reach beyond the grave, of imperfect options, and of the conviction to see a journey through to the end, no matter the cost. Travacio masterfully contrasts a world of geographical and psychological abundance with one of scarcity. This is a world where the landscape reflects the inner workings of the mind.
Sample translation by Will Morningstar
Solo quería bailar
About the Book
The way Solo quería bailar begins immediately makes you wish mindreading was real, just to see if anyone else has an internal monologue as hilariously depraved as Pili’s. This is a whirlwind of a text, beginning in a prison, that takes the idea of ‘no filter’ to dizzying heights. Despite its flippancy and scatalogical subject-matter, there’s an endearing openness towards queer sexuality and anger towards the world that will keep you hooked.
Sample translation by Tim Gutteridge