Santiago in 100 words premieres unpublished conversation between Elena Poniatowska and Diamela Eltit

Two referents of Latin American writing, the Mexican Elena Poniatowska and the Chilean Diamela Eltit, meet in a meeting that will be released online this Thursday, January 27, as part of the call for the short story contest “Santiago en 100 Palabras”, to talk about their creative processes, the city, memory and also about the current political scenario that the country is going through.
“Writing is also memory” is the name of this unpublished meeting moderated by the journalist Antonella Estévez, where both authors reflect on the exercise of memory.
For Diamela Eltit “the most comprehensive memories are always more interesting, which include the other and the others. Not only personal or family memories, but also those broader memories that especially include voices from included.”
Hear the other
For her part, the outstanding Mexican author of La noche de Tlatelolco and Cervantes Prize 2013, Elena Poniatowska, comments: “in Latin American literature it is very important to listen, to make people speak, to take into account others, to take into account what is very different from us, what we do not understand outright. I don’t believe in writing from oneself, although one always writes from oneself.”
In this line, the winner of the 2018 National Literature Prize and author of books such as Lumpérica, Vaca sagrada and Los vigilantes, Diamela Eltit addresses the importance of relieving popular expressions, and thus generate community to be able to carry out transformation processes, such as the one Chile is experiencing.
“I am a great defender of popular speech and what is meant by academic inaccuracies, for example when in Chile it is said in a very systematic way ‘I hope it is not cold’ (…), if we understand it is because it inhabits us. Those speeches seem poetic to me because they were generated by a community. That popular language is never going to be left out.”
Finally, the writers talked about their relationship with the city and how it influences their literary creations. “The city for me I don’t know what it is, they are different cities that are stuck like gum with each other (…). There is nothing more difficult than breaking the lines between them,” Poniatowska says of Mexico City.
Rich programming
The meeting between Diamela Eltit and Elena Poniatowska, will be broadcast this Thursday, January 27 at 8 pm through the social networks of “Santiago en 100 Palabras”.
“Writing is also memory” is part of the rich program, with more than 100 activities, that brings the short story contest this 2022 and that aims to connect creativity and writing with people who have the most diverse interests and motivate them to write their stories in “Santiago en 100 Palabras”.
The short story contest “Santiago en 100 Palabras” is presented by Escondida| BHP and Plagio Foundation, under the auspices of Banco Estado and JC Decaux. To know more details about how to participate in its XXI edition and the various extension activities enter www.santiagoen100palabras.cl.

Original source in Spanish