The third novel by Gemma Ruiz (Sabadell, 1975), after the great success of Argelagues and Ca la Wenling, continues to analyze the place of women in today's world, now with Les nostres mares (like the previous ones, in Proa, with the Sant Jordi award under his arm). It does so from ten independent stories that are braided to form a fresco of the lives of women in the second half of the 20th century in our country, as a tribute to a generation with a drive that reaches our days configuring what what she calls the “clan of the scar”, sorority, with some “protagonists who have not played a relevant role in the fictions. If we talk about mothers, it is normally, from Medea up to here, to criminalize them, judge them and blame them for all the evils”.
Write a tribute to the women of a generation.
You get to an age where it's great to see parents as people, and not just as a parent. And then, when you look at mothers as women, with complexities, with desires and frustrations, with talents, you see that they are surely much more referents than you imagined.
It is a choral novel.
To broaden the representativeness, a single protagonist was not enough for me. I had never had a challenge of such complexity, ten protagonists, and I wanted them all to have the same weight and I wanted to intertwine them. I had to make a bible, like the scriptwriters of the series, so as not to repeat casuistry, so that each one would have complexity and power, because, despite the oppressions, they have given us an example that they subvert oppressions, and despite living in a fascist dictatorship that tells you that you are only a person who serves to reproduce and you are a zero to the left, they infantilize you, they legislate against your rights, despite all that, our mothers are not victims, but subvert their circumstances.
Each one represents a particular problem or improvement. The confinement of women at home, clandestine abortion, health problems that are not taken into account, lesbianism, emigration, social struggle...
I tried not to repeat. All these external circumstances, how they affect us, had to come out. If it only remained a claim and did not affect your body, your life and your experience, it would be an accessory or... like putting a hat on someone. Having to go to London to have an abortion was a tremendous life experience that could cost you your life, it's not putting on a hat.
Some will say that once again the feminist is, all day talking about women...
That is always said when you write about female protagonists. Why is masculine still considered universal? I don't see any problem with the protagonists being women, just as it didn't seem problematic to me that all the protagonists in so many books by writers I've read were men. We live in a patriarchal system that still categorizes us negatively, as if feminine or women's is a problem. It is not in my hands what they may think, it is in my hands to do what I think I like to write and I like to read.
There is a criticism of the patriarchy, but not of men per se.
I have tried to make men believable. For example, Quico is a guy with all the good will, but trained so that his wife will serve him and do what he believes responds to her needs. But then, when he has a daughter, he tells her to study and work. That is our parents, it is the unconsciousness of privilege. That is why I also demand that this book be read by our parents and our classmates, because they will also see this unconsciousness of privilege in which they have participated, surely with good will and without malicious intent. They have been the necessary arm to continue gagging them without being aware.
What is your clan of the scar ?
I am lucky to have many, and in some there are boys, eh?
It's about sharing.
We all know that, no matter how hostile the place where you live and your circumstances may be, there will always be other women who will help you at some point and give you that break. We all know it and you never know which one can help you, which one will open the door for you the day you need it.
Now they call it sorority.
And we have all lived and practiced it.
It is often criticized that many women do one thing to their faces and another to their backs.
The myth about the competitiveness between women is false, masculine and sexist. We all know that we love working with women, and that when we work together it makes for an incredible pop. It is the opposite of what they have sold us. From the beginning of writing, of the cultural story, if these scar clans had been valued, we would have a vision that would not be androcentric or misogynistic.
There is a lack of female references.
And it's not just that you want to have some names in educational programming, it's that they shape the way we value women's stories, which later makes them win fewer literary awards, too.
The less they show up...
Because it is hostile terrain, like the Sant Jordi award, which a woman had not won for 19 years. The lack of references ends up resulting in our stories, our life experiences, having been worth less. They are categorized and problematized by saying that they are feminine, they give them a last name, because those of men are not masculine or of men. A male writer is never asked if he is afraid of being told that his book with male protagonists is for men.
The journey of her book ends with a young girl who also breaks clichés.
Both she and the guy who comes out at the end are the future. I am realistic, because I see and listen to young people and I see that there is another paradigm, and I want to accept what is positive and see that there are young generations who are post-me too and are clear about it.
I guess a lot had to be documented.
It is easier to write about your own contemporaneity, but you may have the wrong idea that since you were born in the seventies everything sounds familiar to you, but it is not. I have reviewed the Francoist laws, the Penal Code, the requirements for driving, for working, the national Catholic ideology, what was explained in schools. We have forgotten that two days ago our mothers had to absorb a lot of filth. It is amazing to review the laws, the usurped rights and the entire fascist ideology: since they have survived and are so flamenco and you see them well, we do not have the measure of what it was like to be treated as second-class citizens, next to the "lazy and thugs" ”, “children and the insane and the crazy”: undercitizens.
Catalan version, here
