Juntando Orillas: escrituras afrolatinoamericanas. Una conversación sobreenajenada and Tidal Waters.

The authors Kianny Antigua and Velia Vidal will dialogue about her works with Andrea Change and Mary Hawley. This is a bilingual event in Spanish and English.

“enajenada, de Kianny Antigua, es un poemario sobre la experiencia humana más
visceral (opresión, dolor, angustia, otredad, desesperanza, encuentro con la
sombra y resurgimiento) representada desde la voz y el cuerpo que componen las
experiencias estéticas de las feminidades situadas geopolíticamente en el Caribe”.
– Lauristely Peña Solano.

“Tidal Waters, by Velia Vidal and translated by Annie McDermott, is an epistolary,
fictional account of one woman moving towards happiness in the black community
of Colombia’s Pacific coast. Vidal offers a vision of how creating something (for
your community, for yourself) is a way of reading and writing your way into a known
place and a new self.” – Charco Press

About Tidal Waters

by Velia Vidal

An epistolary, fictional account of one woman moving towards happiness in the black community of Colombia’s Pacific coast.

After a long absence, Vel has come home to Chocó – to the Afro-Colombian community, to her family, to the sea. This is where the Pacific meets the Caribbean, where she’s establishing herself anew. And the record she keeps is a series of letters to a friend, clarifying for herself where she stands, as she describes that homecoming to another. Vel works to build a literary centre, writing career, and festival with and for the people there. But her return to Chocó is also a claim-staking of her decision to pursue happiness now; an account of her immersion in the towns and rivers and forests she came from; and a redefinition of her relationship to sex and love in real time. And Tidal Waters is a vision of how creating something (for your community, for yourself) is a way of reading and writing your way into a known place and a new self.

About enajenada

by Kianny Antigua

Anticanonical Value

By Lauristely Peña Solano

enajenada by Kianny Antigua is a collection of poems about the most visceral human experience—oppression, pain, anguish, otherness, hopelessness, encounter with the shadow and resurgence—represented by the voice and body that make up the aesthetic experiences of femininities geopolitically situated in the Caribbean. […] enajenada proposes to lose, on purpose, patriarchal and sexist reason, to lose it permanently, to build a new reason from love and the scream, that does not ignore the traumas, the frustrations involved in being a Caribbean woman. 

In an emotional transition, enajenada reminds us “[That] no matter / how much of a poet I am: / The ridges of my nails / always end up smelling / of crushed garlic and onions.” Despite that which is society, patriarchy and its vices, in writing, Antigua affirms: “I found my own room. / In it I am able to fly / to emerge from within / to transgress and transform myself into that woman / of all dreams.”

Valor anticanónico

Por Lauristely Peña Solano

enajenada, de Kianny Antigua, es un poemario sobre la experiencia humana más visceral (opresión, dolor, angustia, otredad, desesperanza, encuentro con la sombra y resurgimiento) representada desde la voz y el cuerpo que componen las experiencias estéticas de las feminidades situadas geopolíticamente en el Caribe. […] enajenada propone perder, a propósito, la razón patriarcal y machista, perderla de manera permanente, construir una nueva razón desde el amor y el grito, que no ignore los traumas, las frustraciones implicadas en el ser-mujer-caribeña. 

En un tránsito emocional, enajenada nos recuerda “[Que] no importa / cuán poeta sea: / el lecho de mis uñas / siempre termina oliendo / a ajo majado y a cebollas”. Pese a eso que es la sociedad, el patriarcado y sus vicios, en la escritura, Kianny afirma: “Encontré mi habitación propia. / En ella soy capaz de volar / de emerger de entre los adentros / de transgredir y transformarme en esa mujer / de todos los sueños”.