Fernanda Trías, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize: Never in the history of humanity have the women we write had so much visibility

The Uruguayan Fernanda Trias received this Wednesday in Mexico the 2021 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize for his novel Pink grime, a dystopian story in which he predicted the pandemic with the same force that he once dreamed of winning this accolade.

Trías (Montevideo, 1976) assured that he always wanted to receive this award and remembered that he affectionately They called her a “witch” for having “predicted the pandemic” of covid-19 in her book, where he outlines a “dystopian world” in which disease and collapsed hospitals predominate.

“Pink grime (2020) in a few months it went from existing solely in my imagination to being reached by reality: masks, overrun hospitals, voluntary and mandatory lockdowns, false news, health and state control, fear, confusion, denialism, bodies that accumulated in trucks , dead that were figures “, he expressed.

The translator and professor at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, where she lives, said that it is almost impossible not to write a fiction like the one that made her worthy of the award in the middle of a world in which humanity is on the verge of extinction.

Humans’ insistence on “dreaming of being gods” has led them to alter ecosystems and become the greatest polluter in the history of the planet.

The author wondered if in this moment of crisis humanity is on the verge of an end or a beginning and wondered what it will find when “Finish gnawing by force of consumption the resources of the world.”

Trías’s novel was chosen by the jury for being “Able to bravely look into the void, but also tenderly treats the central themes of the definition of the human, such as disease, uncertainty, empathy and pain”said jury spokeswoman Ave Barrera.

Before Pink grime the author wrote the books The rooftop (2001) and The invincible city (2014), in addition to the compendium of short stories You will not dream flowers (2016), nominated for Hispano-American Short Story Award Gabriel García Márquez 2017.

The patroness of writers

Sor Juana, whom Trías called the patron saint of writers, pioneered three centuries ago of a struggle that women continue to wage and that at least in literature has led them to place themselves in a place they never had before.

“Never in the history of literature or in the history of humanity have the women we write had so much visibility, the works of so many writers have never been published, read, reviewed and awarded prizes”, he warned.

She demanded that the academy continue to speak of current Latin American women’s literature as something extraordinary and questioning whether it is about “exceptional” talents, although the history of the award itself speaks of the fact that books made by women have a long tradition.

“As Latin American writers we are asked daily to talk about ourselves about the seemingly unimaginable unheard of fact that a woman’s body writes and what, oh, surprise! do it right “, he expressed.

The director of FIL, Marisol Schulz, recalled the Spanish Almudena Grandes, who died last Saturday and who received the Sor Juana Prize in 2011.

The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize was established in 1993 and is a recognition of the literary work of women in the Hispanic world, rewarding the author of a novel originally published in Spanish.

FIL, considered the largest book fair in Spanish, takes place from November 27 to December 5 with the attendance of 600 writers from 46 countries, with the participation of more than 3,000 professionals and 255 exhibitors from 27 countries with an editorial offer of 240,000 titles in 10,000 square meters of exhibition. (I)