Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Mexican Gothic is deeply rooted in the ancient Mexican mythology, interspersed with references to gothic classics such as the Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Rebecca, as well as the original, Grimm and […]
Tag: women writers
The Everywoman: Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
“I wanted to write about the everyday and common but nonetheless undeserved experience of women around me,” said Cho Nam-Joo in an interview for the New York Times, and this is exactly what one can […]
Fireworks
‘Come on, get up! Wake up, come on, it’s started again! Move! Let’s go!’
The blast shook the house. Mother pulled me out of the bed and down the stairs, clutching my sister in her arms.
Another blast.
We stopped in the stairwell. There was a short stretch of terrace we needed to run through in order to reach the cellar door. We waited, then started running between two blasts. She held me tightly behind her and shoved me inside the cellar, where another stairwell led us deep under ground, into the dark. We were already safe when we heard the third blast. My aunt appeared at the bottom of the stairs. The candle in her hand cast a shivering light entrenched in shadows. We went down. I was still dazed from sleep. Wasn’t this supposed to be over? How will I go to school tomorrow? Why did they start again? I could not ask anything out loud. Instead, I looked at the bleak expressions of the adults around me standing in a half circle around a couple of burning candles. My great-uncle met my gaze and read the fear.
The Stitched-up Girl
I will start this new notebook with my all-times favourite author, the one whose books always stir something in me, summon a memory, and awaken a long-buried emotion: Angela Carter. She reminds me of my student days when I decided to analyse the Bakhtinian elements in her Nights at the Circus for my masters thesis and I had spent days at the university library poring over books and magazines, trying to scrap up enough material to complete my eighty-something page paper. Even though it was pretty hard toil, I enjoyed every moment of it. Carter’s works are imbued with lively, colourful, carnivalesque atmosphere and grotesque characters whom you cannot but embrace and learn to love.
