11 books to offer or to offer for Mother’s Day

“My mother, in the dream / I walk through verdant landscapes: / a black mountain that turns around / always, to reach the other mountain / and on the one that follows you are vaguely, / but there is always another round mountain / go around, pay the pace / to the mountain of your joy and my joy (…)”, says Gabriela Mistral, in her poem Fuga.

Maybe we want to give our mothers and/or carers – who are like mothers – a space to escape from the existential weight or, finally, from their daily tasks which, between breaks, bear our name. What better than a book for that. And what better than people who know how to recommend it. We have set a free theme, so as not to fall back into the dynamic of choosing plots that deal with motherhood, as we did last year. However, “the mother” appears like the sun in one or the other work mentioned, with this light which guides and the shadow which chases away, with the warmth of her presence and the cold which comes when she is absent. But also, other themes appear that affect her figure of the individual or the collective, such as being a woman, surviving the frantic pace of day to day, violence, abuse, or the escapes offered by night and dance, when you can don’t sleep. Here are the recommendations, books and essays, published since 2019:

A book of essays that confronts the daily feat of sleeping, is the one recommended by national writer and publisher María Paz Rodríguez, author, among other titles, of ‘Bad Mother’ – recommended last year by local musician Francisca Straube. In Doing the Night, clinical psychologist and writer Constanza Michelson “attempts to explain the idea of ​​insomnia and darkness, in an age of anxiolytics and sleeping pills and ‘putting to sleep’ whatever is inconvenient,” Rodríguez introduces, who claims to have read all the books of the mental health specialist

Rodríguez says that in these essays, in addition, Michelson “makes an analysis of social and political contingency, to unveil the concept of ‘shadow’, in terms of psychoanalysis; install questions and discussions that come up, about the strange times we live in.

If the idea is to help the mother lose herself for a while in the leafy forests that the lyrics offer, María Paz Rodríguez’s second recommendation seems like an excellent alternative. In this book of essays by American writer Rebeca Solnit – of whom Rodríguez claims to be a fan – we dive into the adventure of getting lost and embracing the unknown. “For her, getting lost connects us directly to creation. Whether in a landscape, in music, in a conversation, to get lost is to travel to other human dimensions,” Rodríguez describes.

The discovery of the world and of desire, from the refuge of friendship, appears in this novel recommended by national writer Carolina Brown, author of Nostalgia del Desierto (2021), among others. Panza de burro, according to Brown, “centers on the friendship of two girls in a small town in the Canary Islands, as they abandon childhood and enter the adult world and its complexities together”. The author of this book is Andrea Abreu, one of the latest Spanish revelations, who surprises “by a fresh use of the language, very close to orality, and by his sense of humor to tell the misadventures of everyday life. “. For Brown, it is a novel “funny, original and, also, deeply moving”.

A novel that, according to Brown, “surprises for its coarseness, its ingenuity and, also, its enormous heart”, is that which can be found in Cometierra, the first work of the Argentine writer and teacher Dolores Reyes. “It’s the story of an Argentinian girl who, when she eats dirt, can see the dead,” says the Chilean author. The novel is told from the point of view of the main character, a girl whom her classmates call “Cometierra” and who surrounds her with poetic language and “precise plot management”.

“Fans of Elena Ferrante, as well as the Norwegian Karl Over Knausgård, beware”, warns journalist and writer Antonio Díaz Oliva, author of “The Formative Experience” and “The Deforming Experience”, about these fundamental works of Literature. Modern Danish, in the voice and pen of poet Tove Ditlevsen – who died in 1976.

“Ditlevsen is a classic of Danish literature, but only now is he better known outside the land of Hamlet. This is a confessional trilogy; pages where the tension between her vocation as a writer and the role expected of her as a woman is explored. It’s also a very personal and addictive book,” says Díaz, who quotes, “Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t escape it without help. No one escapes childhood, which sticks to you like a smell”.

Antonio Díaz says that, despite what the cover says, this book has “several authors”. Moreover: “this book belongs to all those who have already been to Blondie”, the mythical nightclub of the capital, refuge for beings who wake up when others sleep. “I like to think that this book will be given away on Mother’s Day. Basically, the Blondie is the mother of Chilean gothic culture. Or something halfway between mother and father. One of the best, if not the best, oral history of the most pop place in all of Santiago,” says the Chilean author.

A frank reflection on motherhood is that offered by Manuel Ugalde, director of literary city , a non-profit association that promotes reading among young people and also revalues ​​the tangible and intangible urban cultural heritage – “the city as an open book to read”. And for that, this book by the Argentine writer Cecilia Fanti. “Already in its title, it evokes this experience of awakening and vigilance so characteristic of the event of being a mother and caregiver. It is a kind of autobiographical novel, of trial and trial and error, which creates a dialogue and emphasizes the vital moments that are always found since you are a caregiver: the new birth of the newly arrived child, with his own story of daughter or son. In a thread work that reflects on the burdens, weights, expectations and desires of being a mother,” describes Ugalde.

These mysterious detours, between meetings and disagreements, which end up revealing an even greater bond than we feared, are found in this novel by the Chilean writer, journalist and lesbofeminist Romina Reyes. “In this, our current and recent history (the dictatorship), the intergenerational dialogue, the ghosts that the past raises, the weight of love, and a continuous dialogue between the feminine, feminine, are woven in a sensitive and lucid way” , explains Manuel Ugalde, for whom this work is “essential”.

https://www.buscalibre.cl/libro-rios-y-provincias/9789569398322/p/51967689

Only three months at the bookstore blue scorpio since he opened his store in Providencia. There, Maximiliano Díaz, one of the three founders, spends the day exploring the books of a catalog that revolves around literature, essays and “feminisms”. From this literary wandering, there are titles thinking of his mother, but also of his grandmother and his aunt, “who were also my mothers for a good part of my life”.

“To my grandmother, I would recommend Every Guilt is a Mystery, by Gabriela Mistral. She has always been very religious and a good reader. And in this anthology, they have drawn up a sort of map of the faith of Mistral, based on essays, interviews, poems and other texts which, I think, are closer to aphorisms. Despite the fact that there are some statements that can suddenly seem a little disturbing (like the fact that he says he is not a suffragist, or that he is against the existence of a secular state, which are quite typical of an era, and of all of them are worth revisiting), he has a very fresh and very authentic vision of what it means to carry a faith,” says Díaz.

Díaz says her mother was a great reader of more modern classics, such as The Old Man and the Sea. However, she also loved to write, “but she had to give it up because she was a mother, and the terrors and demands of adult life were consuming all of his time”. For this reason, he says, he would recommend El hombre del cartel, by María José Ferrada. “A short and strange novel, about characters who make decisions that are only understandable in the light of their own reasoning, and how a community is able to unite for or against others.”

In this novel, which is told from the point of view of a child, different ways of doing and being a family emerge, which according to Díaz, “we only recently recognize, despite our very old age: the people who live with their mothers and aunts, children who pass alone because the mother works, dads and uncles leave, all of this with its own consequences and implications.

Tokio Blues Librería has been around for just over three years, the business that Emilia Briones and Juan Cortés started, almost as an excuse to do what they love most: “finding and publishing treasures.” In this digital store, you can find new and second-hand books, but it is in the latter that there are the most surprises: “you can get vintage out-of-print books”.

The one recommended by Briones y Cortés is nothing more than the literary debut of the Armenian-American writer Kristen Roupenian, “Lo tú tú tú desiendo”, a book consisting of twelve stories, among which is her most famous creation “Cat Person” stands out, which went viral in 2017, when it was published by The New Yorker. Say Tokyo Blues: “The story is about the relationship between a 20-year-old university student, Margot, and a man in his thirties whom she meets at the art house, where he sells pop- Its background refers to the mistreatment that some women experience when they want to end a date or a relationship, a universal plot that very well reflects the feeling that women experience until today.

A book that has had an excellent reception both by critics and by readers at home.

*Prices for products in this item are current as of April 29, 2022. Values ​​and availability may change.