Gemma Ruiz's third novel (Sabadell, 1975), after the explosive 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 , in Proa, with the Sant Jordi award under his arm). It does so from ten independent stories that intertwine as the pages turn 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 push which reaches our days setting up what she calls the “clan of the scar”, the sorority, with some “protagonists who have not had a relevant role in the fictions. If we talk about mothers, it's usually from Medea towards 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 really good to see your parents as people, and not just as a father or a mother. And then, when you look at mothers as women, with complexities, with longings and frustrations, with talents, you see that they are surely much more referential than you had imagined.
It is a choral novel.
In order to make the representation wider, a single protagonist was short 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, as the screenwriters of the series do, in order not to repeat cases, so that each one had complexity and power, because, despite the oppressions, they have given us an example that subverts the oppressions, and despite living in a dictatorship fascist who tells you that you are only a person who serves to reproduce and you are a zero on the left, they infantilize you, they make laws against your rights, despite all this, our mothers are not victims, but subvert their circumstances
Each one represents a particular problem or overcoming. The closure of women at home, clandestine abortion, health problems that are not taken into account, lesbianism, emigration, social struggle...
I tried not to repeat myself. All these external circumstances, as they affect us, had to come out. If it were just a claim and didn't affect your body, your life and your experience, it would be accessory or... like putting a hat on someone. Having to go for an abortion in London was a tremendous life experience that could also cost you your life, it's not putting on a hat.
Some will say that once again this feminist, talking about women all day...
This is always said when you write about female protagonists. Why is what is masculine still considered universal? I don't find it a problem that the protagonists are women, just as I didn't find it problematic that all the protagonists were men in so many books by writers I've read. We live in a patriarchal system that still categorizes us negatively, as if being feminine or a woman 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 critique of patriarchy, but not men per se.
I tried to make the men as believable as possible. For example, Quico is a guy with all the good will, but trained for his wife to serve him and do what he thinks meets his needs. But then, when he has a daughter he tells her to study and work. That's our parents, it's the unconsciousness of privilege. That is why I also demand that this book be read by our parents and our peers, because they will also see this unconsciousness of privilege of which they have been part, surely with good will and without intentions of any malice. They have been the necessary arm to continue gagging them without being aware of it.
What is your scar clan?
I'm lucky to have a lot of them, and some of them have boys too, huh?
It's about sharing.
We all know that, no matter how hostile the place you live and the circumstances you have, there will always be other women who will help you at some point and give you that respite. We all know it and you never know who can help you, who will open the door for you the day you need it.
Now they call it a sorority.
And we have all experienced and practiced it.
It is often criticized that many women do one thing on the face and another on the back.
The myth about competitiveness among women is false, male and sexist. We all know we love working with women, and when we work together it's an incredible blast. It's the opposite of what we've been sold. From the beginning of the writing, of the cultural story, if these clans of the scar had been valued, we would have a vision that would not be androcentric or misogynistic.
Female references are missing.
And it's not just that you want to have some names inside an educational software, it's that they shape the way we value women's stories, which then makes them win fewer literary prizes, too.
Or that they show up less...
Clearly, because it is hostile terrain, like the Sant Jordi award, which had not been won by a woman for 19 years. The lack of references ends up redundant in the fact that our stories, our life experiences, have been worth less. They are categorized and problematized by saying they are feminine, they give them a surname, because men's are not masculine or men's. A male writer is never asked if he is afraid of being told that his book with male protagonists is about men.
The journey of the book ends with a young girl who also breaks stereotypes.
Both she and the guy who comes out at the end are the future. I am a realist, because I see, feel, listen to young guys and see that there is another paradigm, and I want to take what is positive and see that there are young generations who are already seeing all this. They are post-me too and they know it.
I guess it should be documented a lot.
It's easier to write about your own contemporaneity, but you can have the wrong idea that because you were born in the seventies everything sounds like you, but it's not. I have reviewed Franco's laws, the Penal Code, the requirements to drive, to work, all the Catholic national ideology, what was explained in schools. We forgot that two days ago our mothers had to absorb a lot of crap. Reviewing the laws, the usurped rights and the whole fascist ideology, you are horrified because, since they have survived and above them are the sea of flamencos and you see them well, we have no idea what it was like to treat them like second-class citizens, next to the "vagrants and miscreants", "the children and the demented and the crazy": under-citizens.
