Laura Alcoba
is an Argentine-born writer and translator who lives in Paris, France. Her
first book, Manèges (The Rabbit House), described Argentina’s
“Dirty War” of the 1970s from a child’s perspective, when even the very young
knew what could happen “if your political sympathies drew the attention of the
dictatorial military regime”. Thousands were killed, tortured, and abducted, and many names remain among "los desaparecidos".
In the powerful and widely acclaimed memoir,
readers see events through the eyes of the young Alcoba, whose father is
imprisoned, forcing her and her mother to live in hiding with other members of
the resistance movement.
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| Laura Alcoba (Photo: F. Mantovani - Editions Gallimard) |
Alcoba
followed this affecting story with Le
bleu des abeilles (The Blue of the Bees), which recounts her move to Europe
to join her mother who had been granted refuge in France. At the age of ten,
the author discovered a new country and language, and the book depicts a
child’s experiences with living in exile, even as her father remained
imprisoned “at home”.
This year
Alcoba has published La Danse de
l’Araignée (The Dance of the Spider / Gallimard Press), her fifth book and
the latest in the highly recommended trilogy of memoirs. In the following
interview, she speaks with Jamaican writer Alecia McKenzie (SWAN's editor) about her new work, her natal country, and her life in France as
an author. (The interview is translated from French.)
A. McKenzie: How would you describe La Danse de l’Araignée? What can readers
expect?
L. Alcoba: In La Danse de l’Araignée, the
12-year-old narrator lives with her mother and a friend of her mother named
Amalia, in France, on the outskirts of Paris. These two women and the young
girl are Argentine refugees. The story
takes place at the beginning of the 1980s. The narrator in the book is on the
threshold of adolescence and all the changes it brings – anxiety and dreams. Her
head is also full of the correspondence that she has with her father, a
political prisoner in Argentina. Despite the separation and the physical
absence, the father is very much present thanks to the epistolary exchange. In
one of his letters, he speaks to her of a spider that could serve as a pet, as
a companion. A huge spider, a hairy tarantula, which makes her dream.
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| Alcoba's lastes book (Gallimard). |
But how can a man play his role as a father
even when he’s absent? In La Danse de
l’Araignée, the challenges and obstacles are so many: distance, the prison
where her father is, censorship (the letters are read by the prison
administration and have to pass certain controls to enter or leave the prison).
However, the narrator and her father manage to speak with each other, and the
father/daughter relationship becomes a reality.
A.M.: Why have you told your story as
a trilogy, rather than as a one-volume memoir?
L.A.: I didn’t set out to write a trilogy. These three books came one after the other. A
few years following the publication of Manèges
(The Rabbit House), it seemed to me
that the little girl who narrated the story in my first book – about her life
under dictatorship in a house where there was a printing press behind a
rabbit-breeding enterprise – should regain the words. To speak of exile, this
time, and also the way in which an absent person could be at the centre of a
child’s existence: that’s what I did
with Le Bleu des abeilles, where I
evoked the correspondence that I maintained for a long time with my father. We wrote
once a week to each other for two and a half years.
But after the
publication of this book, I realized that the little girl hadn’t said
everything there was to say. I felt that she needed to continue her story. Something
important happens in La Danse de
l’Araignée. My latest book marks the
end of the narrator’s exile: it’s after what is recounted here that she can
fully put down roots in her new country. Furthermore, the age of the narrator
in La Danse de l’Araignée
particularly interests me. This age when one is between two worlds: that of a child and that of burgeoning adulthood.
A.M.:
In The Rabbit House, you began
the prologue by noting that you thought you would write this story only when
you were very old, but then one day you “couldn’t bear to wait any longer”. How
did this day come about? What made you begin to “remember the past in much more
detail”?
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| The first in the trilogy. |
I remember
very well what we lived through in this house, where several people lost their
lives in a tragic way after our departure. For a long time, I had wanted to
write about these events. I told myself that if I wanted to become a writer, I
needed to find the courage to begin with this. That this story and no other had
to be the first stone. But I couldn’t stop saying “later”.
Still, I felt a
sense of urgency at a certain moment. I had to write, immediately. I think the
birth of my daughter can explain this feeling. I started writing my first book
at the moment that my daughter reached exactly the same age that Clara Anahi was
when her mother was assassinated. That, without doubt, contributed to a sort of
closeness between Diana and myself, and the memory of Diana came alive. Suddenly
I could see her again. Her beauty, her smile, her strength. It was necessary to
save a trace of all that, which I could give to others in writing this book.
A.M.:
The events are all portrayed with gripping clarity and intensity in the
books. How do you balance “truth” and “memory” as a writer?
L.A.: I tried to bring up all the images from memory (the
visual dimension is very important in my writing – it’s always the starting
point). Using these images, I look for
the child that I was, and especially her voice. But this voice is that of a
character. It’s not me remembering myself from the present. It’s the child who
speaks – a child that I no longer am, a child who has to be a creation since
she speaks in the present for herself. But
this child, I look for her and I create her through the images of the past that
I manage to bring to light. There can of course be some distortions. My books
are not testimonies. I see them as the result of a sort of quest.
The intensity
with which children and adolescents live in relationship to the world is very
special. For them, everything is new, everything is discovery. I think that the intensity comes from my
making a child speak, that I try to give form to the past from this point of
view, from this “distance
A.M.: Yet, how much of your books is
bearing witness, so that atrocities committed are not forgotten?
L.A.: The past resonates in us and around us. You cannot turn
your back. When it is painful, when it brings wounds, to ignore the past could
be toxic, even very dangerous sometimes. All my writing speaks of this, I
think. But if you have to give the
hurtful past its place, if you have to listen to it and draw lessons from it,
this is also to free yourself from it.
A.M.: You write in French, but you
translate books from Spanish. How do you relate to the two languages?
I really need
these two languages, which I love deeply. I pass from one to the other
ceaselessly. I love translating. But for my literary work, it’s French that
comes most naturally. Perhaps because Spanish is tied to fear, as I was growing
up. When I was a child, during the Argentine dictatorship, it happened often
that I didn’t know what I could say and what I had to keep hidden. So I
preferred to keep quiet, it was wiser. It’s because of this that, although I
dearly love my maternal language, I’m very grateful for French, very happy of
the freedom that I’ve found using it.
A.M.: How have the books been received
in Argentina, and in Latin America generally?
L.A.: In Argentina, my books have been received with a lot of
warmth and sympathy. Each week, I receive messages from readers, often young
people. The reception to the books in Spain, Latin America and particularly
Argentina has really touched me.
A.M.: What’s next for you as a writer?
L.A.: I’m currently writing a book that requires a lot of
research and which I hope to finish in a year. But perhaps it will take two
more years. It’s a story that occurs between Latin America and Europe. For this
novel, I’m working on a true story that requires me to consult many books and
to call on others for their memories.
Laura Alcoba and other
writers from Latin America and the Caribbean will discuss their work at the
Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris on March 15, 2017.
(Copyright: SWAN). For another version of this article, please see IPS News: http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/03/books-a-writer-speaks-of-childhood-spent-during-a-dirty-war/
(Copyright: SWAN). For another version of this article, please see IPS News: http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/03/books-a-writer-speaks-of-childhood-spent-during-a-dirty-war/
