A recurring question for any writer is what our opinion is of women's literature. To me, this category used to seem discriminatory, since no one has ever been asked about men's literature. In fact, I used to think that gender is undetectable in poetry, something evidenced by the fact that many women have published under male names without anyone noticing throughout history. However, the recent boom of autofiction written by women has changed my mind. And I'm beginning to think that the new autofiction has not been, until now, a thing for men.
It is often said that autofiction has always been done and that the new writings of the self signed by women are not original in this sense. But I do not agree. Because autofiction should be understood not as a story of one's own life, but as a story in which what has been experienced must be transformed so that it makes sense. It is not a life with little lies whose purpose is to justify, ennoble or lament, but a life that can only be told by virtue of the literary work we do with it. For example, Deadly and pinkby Paco Umbral, would fit this definition.
But in the global phenomenon of new autofiction, it also happens that this literary work consists of bringing to light what has always been in sight but has not been seen. Making people see what is visible is a literary task, but not so easy. And what is wanted to be seen within the visible, within this current, is the exploitation and denigration of women within heteropatriarchal societies. Literary work therefore assumes its greatest difficulty in not becoming a current controversy, but in offering the possibility of penetrating the opaque layers of the visible. Some will do it better than others, of course. But there are many and very different voices that write from this position around the world. I think of Deborah Levy (The cost of living), Rachel Cusk (Remains), Aixa de la Cruz (Change of idea), Vanessa Springora (The consent) Camila Sosa Villada (The evil ones), Vivian Gornick (fierce attachments), Eider Rodríguez (Construction material), Alana Porter (Bad habit)… and so many others.
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In this sense, something substantial to define this new autofiction is that it has become a consciously and consciously feminine movement of vindication and denunciation of an ignored reality. And what this movement is doing is creating a vision of the world and a discourse to which women can not only adhere, but also provide them with a precise identity. And in doing so, she is bursting the corset that historically strangled the feminine imagination. In the same way, magical realism became the reality of the Ibero-American and the Ibero-Americans assumed it as such in their cultural imagination. It was more than literature, it was a way of being and looking.
I think that, perhaps, the form of belonging to a movement, the identity that the author (or author) provides and assimilates, is what characterizes a literary movement and not subordinate elements such as style, theme or literary artifact. in general. And that is why I say that this new autofiction is not, at the moment, a man's thing.
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