“A super-starry night is poetry in high doses”: Berta Mongé

Mexico City. To give shadethe first book by Catalan writer Berta Mongé (Barcelona, ​​1979), bursts onto the publishing scene as a chronicle or personal diary of a woman who wants to become a mother and finds her way through assisted reproduction.

From the first pages the reader discovers that the story is also a log of memories, questions, desires and uncertainty. Published by Malpaso, it is a text that simply writes about the beauty of life, with all its chiaroscuros, explains the author in an interview with The Day.

After years of privately expressing her hopes and ideas in her letters, Mongé realized that she had enough material to put together a book. Her editor told her that it was a memoir, and in Mexico they mentioned that it was poetic prose. “I had never imagined that my first book would be about this subject and in this way, but when I realized that it was a powerful story, one that perhaps someone would identify with, I presented the manuscript to the publishing house where I work as an art director and they told me: ‘yes, there is a book here.’”

“To give shade It was born from the impulse to write that I have always had, not from the intention of making a book, and it took me the time it took me to do seven fertilization treatments. in vitro“that is, four years.”

With the volume in her hands, on a video call from her home in Barcelona, ​​Berta says with great confidence: “Writing is a way of understanding life and understanding myself, which I cannot achieve by speaking, thinking, reading or being silent. Writing is a path to learning and self-knowledge because for me writing has to do with introspection. Technically I could write a pirate adventure, but it doesn’t come naturally to me, because for me writing goes from the inside out.”

The book was published in Spain in 2022, “a month before my son Bruno was born, and it was very strange because it is my first book, with a lot of enthusiasm behind it, with the pride of starting and finishing a project of this type. It talks about the impossibility of being a mother and when it was about to be published I was 8 and a half months pregnant, so I was excited to have it in my hands and on the other hand think ‘how little I identify with this story now’.

“In the end, I am very grateful for having done it because it bears witness, very real and absolutely trustworthy, to the emotions and thoughts I had in a part of my life that was very turbulent. If I had not written it, I would remember this story perfectly, but being here, I do not just remember it, but I have it sealed, with the exact feeling and thought of those days, those afternoons, those nights, and that makes me very excited, to have a book testimony that is totally real.”

After Bruno was born, the writer put the promotion of the book on hold, which will begin this month in Mexico.

The author admits that she is not a great reader of poetry, although her texts are imbued with it: “Perhaps I have a poetic tone because I consume a lot of beauty throughout the day, in the sense that I try to feed myself with the poetry of life.

“Now, for example, I am on the terrace of my house in the countryside and the night is full of stars, you can hear the cicadas in the background, there are fireflies, that is pure poetry, not in the literary sense, but in a high dose.

“Flowers are poetry, a good movie (I watch a lot of movies) or a nice painting. I really like aesthetics in general, the interior design of houses, fashion, art; a nice toy is poetry, a beautiful way of walking, a good dish, a delicious meal, a sunset, the sea, in short, those kinds of things that are infinite are poetry; so I think that my way of writing poetically draws from that, from the poetry of life, not from books, although I do draw from the good ones, which are endless.”

“There is a universal canon that is not written anywhere, but what I try to read are books that I already know I will like because they are great books.”

Pause time

Berta Mongé insists that writing gives her a very beautiful view of life, which “I wouldn’t have if I didn’t do it. I feel super lucky to know how to write. I’m not interested in the commercial part of literature, I don’t seek the other person’s view. It’s just the enjoyment of the moment one on one with the paper.”

“Writing makes you stop, because we generally go very fast, whether we want to or not. Writing is having a moment of pause and even if it is something sad or hard, the fact of doing it is beautiful.

“In To give shade I knew that what I was explaining was very difficult, but I knew I could make it beautiful. I didn’t want to make a drama out of it. I chose to dress him in beautiful clothes because, ultimately, above all, life is beautiful,” she concludes.

Berta Mongé’s book is now available in Mexican bookstores.