Chilean-American writer
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Multiculturalism as an ideology has been a possibility for maybe creating diversity, but I think that it has become a very intolerant concept. And I think it's been really appropriated by people from the left that have very fundamentalist views of the world just like people from the right, and I consider that absolutely dangerous...I like to believe that I'm a person that crosses borders, that I am in the thresholds of places, but I am also rooted in the Spanish world and in the Jewish world. Those are the anchor of my world, those two worlds, and then that's where I speak from. You have to have a platform where you can speak from. It's like you cannot be all over the place, and I think multiculturalism is like being all over the place.
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The Latin American writer of the 1970s, like the journalist, cinematographer, and photographer, is the one who prevents the truth from disappearing, the one who searches for the testimony of eyewitnesses, of the forgotten ones, offering a taste of life and validity to the word. Written literature, oral testimonies, and public performances on forbidden streets demonstrate that Latin America hums with life despite the collective massacres, book burnings, and obligatory silence.
Poetry has the ability to explore subjects that are often too difficult to simply talk about — for example, torture, violence, and especially gender violence. Poetry is intimate and searches for the essential in the human condition, so topics that have to do with human rights are central for poetry. Poetry is also an art form that searches for truth and justice. (2015)
In the house where I grew up in Santiago de Chile I heard a Babel of whispers, songs, prayers, and languages. Spanish was my language, my mother tongue spoken in the fiestas, in the schools, and in the poetry books I loved and read out loud as poetry should be read. My maternal grandparents spoke German and Yiddish. My paternal grandparents spoke Russian and often sang to the music of a balalaika bought in a flea market at the outskirts of the city. At school I learned Hebrew and songs in Ladino. At first I seemed to be confused with too many languages, but as the years progressed all of these languages were and continue to be a part of my inheritance as a Jew, as a poet, and as a woman. It was truly enchanting to hear and feel the depth of these many languages that embedded the narratives of the Jewish people throughout our history-an ancient people carrying their prayers and their legacy across the earth.
For me, my exile had nothing to do with an expulsion or with the impossibility of remembrance, because somehow or other one always returns. Dictators perish and borders change. However, the desire endures. The desire for a fragrance or for the way in which certain vines cling to doorways. The desire to wake up and recognize oneself in one's own language but more than anything to be recognized by others.