There are so many things to love about a Berlin autumn – Kurbiszeit, the crispness of the air – and not least of them is the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin (ILB), which returns this month with an exciting and engaging lineup. We spoke with this year’s curator in residence, the Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza, to learn more about the special series she has designed for the programme, and why Spanish-language writing is what we should all be reading right now.
What does it mean to be the curator in residence?
I was part of a highly creative team – of women, mostly – who were trying to engage people in a conversation about issues that are of relevance to our present. In my events, I was interested in providing the views, plural, that have been generated in the Spanish-speaking world, as a critical alternative to what we are seeing elsewhere. I invited Spanish-language writers who have been working very closely on issues of migration and gender violence, but still in very formally innovative ways.
Are there any writers that you’re excited to see gain a wider audience?
I believe that one of the responsibilities of festivals such as this one is to invite up-and-coming writers to engage in novel conversations with audiences. We should listen more to people like Velia Vidal, Eliana Hernández-Pachón or Luisa Reyes Retana. Or to the bilingual experiences of poets like Esther Andradi, who’s lived here in Berlin for 20 years.
What issues were you trying to bring out with your selections?
The fact that writing is not an isolating activity. It’s not something that we do from an ivory tower. Many of these writers are beautiful writers, but they are also very concerned about their communities and the world in which we live. They are thinking about the inescapable conditions of our time – migration and gender violence – that we have to think through together if we want to get to a possible future.
Why is that political engagement important?
When I write, I’m not using a private language. I’m borrowing the language that entire communities of speakers are using and defending out there. So from that point of view, everything I write is engaged, right? Everything that I write is political. Through imagination, we can get to a different vision and a different way of life – in this world. Not later, right now.
Writing is a collaborative practice, and at its best, it engages dynamically with the here and now. Literature helps us to see in how many ways – socially, economically, culturally – migrants have contributed to our way of life, to making our universe more complex. Directly or indirectly, people who are writing about the present are touching upon those issues. So, let’s talk about it, and let’s do it seriously and with generosity of spirit, too.
You write in both Spanish and English, and are now curating a mostly German festival. What does multilingual literature do for us?
Have you noticed that we are one person in one language and another person in another? It’s not just a matter of the vocabulary. It’s a matter of grammar, in a larger sense of the word – the grammar of life. So when we think in different languages, we’re exercising this great capacity of critical thinking. A festival at which translation is key helps us understand how diverse we are, how much we depend on that diversity. It is such a gift, that access.
What events should our readers be sure not to miss?
Through imagination, we can get to a different vision and a different way of life… Not later, right now.
Gabriela Wiener is going to be here with a recent German translation of her work. Velia Vidal is an Afro-Colombian writer who’s been doing work in the Chocó region of Colombia. There are going to be writers from Latin America who have been living elsewhere in Europe, in Norway or in Finland, and they’re going to share their experiences, their relationship to both migration and literature. Most of these writers have an important role as activists in their own communities. Javier Zamora, the Salvadoran-American writer, who’s written a fabulous memoir about his journey as a kid traveling solo from El Salvador to the United States, is coming to Berlin, I believe for the first time. And there are writers from the highly diverse and extremely dynamic Latin American community here in Berlin. So I’d say don’t miss any of the events, they’ll be just fabulous.
And when can our readers catch you?
On September 13, I’m going to be talking about my book, Liliana’s Invincible Summer. I wrote it in both English and Spanish at the same time. It was complicated, it was slow – maddeningly so at times – but I think it responded to the capacity of a second language to protect yourself from painful events that you’ve lived in a mother tongue. It’s going to be my first time talking about it here, and it was recently translated into German, the first of mine to be, so I’m extremely happy about that.
- Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin, Sep 11-24, full programme and tickets at literaturfestival.com
