As if it were in contempt of some imposition dictated minutes before, the female character of the first story of The flying girls It begins with a challenging question: “Lower your voice?”, “Why would I have to? If one murmurs it is because he is afraid or because he is ashamed, but I am not afraid. I am not ashamed “, he clarifies firmly and continues saying:” Others feel that I have to lower my voice, reduce it, turn it into a mole that descends, that advances downwards when what they want is to go up. “
These first lines, written in the first person, give an account of the characters and powerful voices that make up the work of Monica Ojeda, and his ability to delve into social realities that have been silenced.
Monica’s work arrived in a year of horror to speak of horror with a narrative beauty that allows the reader to move to the heights, feel the cold that occurs there and even imagine the red cheeks of each of the characters (natural reaction of the body when in the heights).
There is a tale titled Clotted blood, which, through the monologue of a teenage girl who says she likes blood, addresses self-harm (recalling the cases of young people who cause themselves pain to escape their problems), abandonment, pedophilia, rape and abortion.
It was like childbirth, but the other way around, because instead of something alive, something dead came out ”.
“” Death is also born, “said the grandmother,” describes one of her lines, which elsewhere reveals how someone’s innocence can be a sign of another’s advantage: “He gave me something bitter to drink that made me sleep in the bushes. When I came home with fatigue and pain between my legs… ”.
The flying girls not only is it one of the best books of 2020 according to the newspapers The country The The world. Nor is it just a work that was sold out in its first import in places like Spanish Bookstore or WordLab; Less is one of the most commented, recommended or questioned today by the literary world. Ojeda’s book is a book that questions literature itself, he says Maria Paulina Briones, from House Address.
“It makes us consider the multiple possibilities of expansion that literature has and if the narrative is a slope with fixed or mutant forms. We are facing a trans book”, continues Briones.
“The flying girls it is halfway between narrative and poetry, halfway between tradition and rupture, and that is why it is a milestone “, adds the also writer.
For her it is a book that has a powerful davilian side (by César Dávila Andrade). “Therefore, we can identify Ecuadorian literature itself in its genesis.”
The work highlights its aesthetics. “It is in the narrative where Mónica Ojeda achieves the best poetry. This means that there is a treatment of language that translates any story into something very powerful, very difficult to fully elucidate. “
The flying girls It is made up of eight stories, half of them narrated in the first person with a dramatic spirit that invites you to read them aloud.
“The monologue of Ana in Soroche is tremendous”, highlights Marta Sanz, Of diary The country, about one of the sole proprietorships that makes up the penultimate story of The flying girls, which presents a group of friends who decide to take a trip to the Andean mountain ranges to help alleviate the emotional burden that has been generated in Ana, after a video of her being intimate with her ex-husband has been leaked and spread throughout the social networks.
The story shows how embarrassed Ana feels by the event, not necessarily because of a moral issue, but rather because of an aesthetic issue that makes strong points towards her body, described with luxurious details by the author. “Fat thighs, wrinkled, with plateaus and sags of orange peel”; “An infected, indigestible, repellent, repulsive body, believing itself sexy”; “Hyena wrinkles”.
Body infected, indigestible, repellent, repulsive, believing itself sexy.
For The world “The stories of the Ecuadorian writer are explorations in the wild: in the textures of pain, in the mystery of animal life, in the vertigo of earthquakes …”.
“The Ecuadorian writer takes us to an Andean gothic world and shows us, once again, that horror and beauty belong to the same family. A book that talks about women victims, fighters and wise men. This author has become one of the most successful voices in Latin American literature ”, says, for her part, bookstore Mr. Books.
The flying girls, whose title appeals to this legend of the Mira people, of Ecuador, where it was said that there were women who climbed on the roof, smeared their armpits with honey and flew; said by Ojeda herself to this newspaper; It is a poetic song to the darkness of life.
“Without a doubt a book where there is emotion, life, passion. Of course, also, death”Briones points out. (THE)
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