So, I don’t know about the greatest Chilean of all
time and I’m not even shore I can come up with one of the greatest, so I’m going
to write about someone that I don’t really know enough about but I’m
increasingly interested in.
It turns out that it was my birthday recently
and my cousin, who knows a lot about books (he studied literature), gave me a
book by a Chilean author that I had never heard of at the time, Lina Meruane is
her name. He wasn’t surprised that I didn’t know about her because apparently in
Chile she is very unknown, known mostly amongst academic circles and people who
study and teach literature.
At the beginning of the book you can read a
little bit about her life and work. She was one of the first writers that, after
the dictatorship in Chile in the 90s, started writing novels with the intention
of criticizing the transitional process and the ‘fake celebrations’ that came
with it. These types of critical novels have made other authors more renowned,
like José Donoso for example, but Line Meruane has never been really known
amongst people of her own country. She has also written about the position of
women in society, questioning our imposed roles and criticizing the control
system.
She has
won many prices abroad, but apparently in Chile her books haven’t been
published many times, and their diffusion has been lousy. I guess this has to
do with the fact that she is a woman and also a critic; these two
characteristics combined may turn out in unpopularity at least when she started
publishing, more than twenty years ago. Despite all this, lately I’ve noticed
that she has been participating more actively of cultural occurrences
in Chile, which could help her make her work known. I think it’s important because
I don’t think we (as Chileans and as women) have read much about the women’s
point of view about the things that happened during the dictatorship, and I think
they should have a lot to say about it. I think it’s important to remember our
past with different and new points of view.
I would ask her in which ways being
a female writer and critic has determined her work’s diffusion.
