Sinaloa.- A month after being created, the Mrs. Dalloway Bookstore It has become relevant for a peculiarity: has only literary works written by women of all times and from various parts of the world.
For this reason, it is placed as unique in the Sinaloa capital, from where the stigma that women only like to look beautiful has emerged towards the world. To find out how this idea arose, this concept of a bookstore in Culiacán, its manager, Sonia Higuera MontanoShe specifies the path that led her there.
What is your profession?
I studied philosophy and after finishing my studies I joined the master’s degree in history. There I chose a thesis topic, which was Violence against women in the modern press from 1933-1944. The topics that are developed in a thesis are usually this long. Specifically so that there is greater precision and more viable results, such as field work.
Having finished studying for the master’s degree, it was already a lot of academic study in a way; very rigorous, very closed, and I felt like I was searching for something more. I continued with my self-taught studies and began to search the literature. An area in which I had not yet ventured, but names like Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Joanna Scott, who were feminist theorists, some declared as such, but others who, despite leaving a legacy, they did not.
How did the love of reading come to you?
That devotion to women’s writing or that taste, rather, for women’s writing was already latent in me. I attended Gonvill, I spent my entire fortnight and went religiously and continued with my studies in a self-taught way and that’s how I fell into literature.
Have you written any book?
I wrote a story called Crocodile Smile that was published in El Universal de San Luis, in which the subject of the disappearance of a minor is discussed. Generally, in the workshops we work under a slogan, and the slogan was to develop your worst fear, starting from this or from a phobia, something that leaves you in shock, that causes you that anguish. I have a 15-year-old daughter and I left a kidnapping, which is surely one of the greatest fears of many women and mothers and fathers of families, specifically because of the situation in which we live.
How did the idea for this bookstore come about?
When I studied and in my academic training in the classroom. I can honestly tell you about one, I think I’m abusing if I say 10 percent, of female writers that I saw in the classrooms. I was never aware of that when I was a student, I only realized it until I graduated. But that was it, for one thing.
I had the issue of violence against women in the modern press, I was looking for theoreticians and it was difficult for me to find women writers. More than anything when we are students we look for recommendations, somehow trying to build a theoretical framework.
What was it that most attracted you to this concept?
That it could publicize the work of the writers and that in some way it could become a cultural center. A space where women and men could go. Because the idea is also that there is that fusion, in which we can establish links, that we can talk about literature, art, poetry and basically that was what encouraged me the most. I never considered the question of profitability because I am sure that these books are not going to be found in another bookstore.
Which authors are the most requested?
Virginia Woolf, Elena Garro, Brenda Navarro, Carson McCullers, Isabel Allende, Mariana Enríquez, Rosa Montero, Amparo Dávila, among others.
How has the public reception been?
They are usually attending the events, there is a lot of flow. Suddenly there are days when there is less flow when we don’t have an event and fewer people attend.
But on Poetry Tuesday we had 40 people. We have had two presentations so far. We also had an opening moment and a discussion about Virginia Woolf. We have a full group workshop and it will be face-to-face on Saturdays, a plastic arts workshop. It’s art therapy and it’s called Human Sacrifice. We had a Japanese bookbinding workshop with great influx.
When we call, people are actually attending the events. They do come and tell us that such a person recommended the bookstore to them, or that they saw us on the networks.
How has your journey through literature been?
Once I graduated from my master’s degree, after so much academic study, so much rigor, I wanted a break, but I don’t know why we can’t stop reading. I wanted to keep reading. At first, in a self-taught way, I began to read psychoanalysis. I read most of Freud’s work. Precisely because Freud avoids literature, I continued with literature, then I started with literary criticism. Domingo Arguelles, Gabriel Zaid, but yes, he was still the same, he searched and searched. I took a face-to-face workshop at the ISIC with Isaac López and he brought me closer to several contemporary writers such as Fernanda Melchor, Daniel Sada, Ariana Harwicz and from there he did not let go of a writer. As he was discovering a writer, he would not let her go.
Why did you choose this name for the bookstore?
Mrs. Dalloway is the name of a novel by Virginia Woolf. It is a novel of an upper-class woman that takes place while organizing a party. Mrs. Dalloway goes out to buy some flowers and the novel begins. She goes to the past, to the future, to have a flow of consciousness, she is going to have those aspirations of unfulfilled dreams, of promises not made, of heartbreak.
I really like that novel, the way the human psyche works, the times that are constantly changing and you threw almost 300 pages and Mrs. Dalloway only went out to buy flowers to give a party tonight. It is the passing of a day, there are different narrative techniques.
What has been your happiest and saddest moment?
It is easier to identify sadness than happiness. The saddest was when my dad passed away in September. And the happiest when my daughter was born. That is one and also when I saw the poster of the bookstore exposed.
Next projects
We plan to schedule more presentations, we are going to have a cinema club. We are going to invite writers with whom I currently work, apart from the writers from Sinaloa who have been invited. We also plan to bring national writers and if it is within my possibilities, foreign writers. We are going to have a meeting with writers at the end of the year. Witch Lace is the premise. Because we haven’t made it known yet, but they are the plans we have for the rest of the year.
books you recommend
Sonia Higuera Montaño has had a broad literary education and has managed to stand out as the intellectual woman she is today.
- A bird in the eye of Xóchitl Olivera Lagunes
They are stories that present protagonists in whose body alterations are manifested, sometimes fortuitous, sometimes sordid.
- Kill yourself, love by Ariana Harwicz
The protagonist is subjected by her circumstances to being a woman, mother, foreigner and wife, despite all that desire.
- The day I learned that I don’t know how to love by Aura García-Junco
It is an (anti) manual to rethink the patterns that keep society divided in a violent binarism.
- A Room of Virginia Woolf’s Own
The author examines the limitations of femininity at the beginning of the 20th century. With the startling prose and poetic license of a novelist.
We recommend you read:
The Profile
Sonia Higuera Montaño, librarian
Place and date of birth: Culiacán, Sinaloa. February 12, 1983.
Family: Her husband José María Lizárraga Ortiz and daughter, Frida Julieta Higuera Montaño.
Studies: Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and master’s degree in history.
Current position: Owner and manager of the Mrs. Dalloway Bookstore.
Favorite Author: Virginia Woolf.
Biggest dream: That my bookstore grows and that there are more in the entire Mexican Republic.
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