“Women exist after the age of fifty,” the Argentine writer says in an interview. Ines GarlandA acquittal Which runs through the pages of his latest book, Move diary (Al-Fajwara) which the author contemplates Menopause and changes That accompanies it, a taboo subject until recently.
“I feel more interested now,” says Garland (Buenos Aires, 1960) during the conversation. In Madrid, where this work is presentedA “gift” to her career, she says, that has resonated with her readers, “if less so.”
“Someone told me he saw the cover, read the back cover and thought: ‘I’m not interested in this,'” the author explains. “Then he thought: ‘How could I not be interested, if this happens to the women around me?'”
Garland conceived this work as a book about movement (Home, Country, Emotional, Interior, Life Stages), “Among those changes was menopause, but I didn’t realize what it meant until I saw the readers’ reaction. It opened up valuable conversations and spaces for me with other women.”
For the writer It is a book of maturity and synthesis.Because the topics she addresses were in her head before, but in a different way: “I was only able to write them at this age, not only because of menopause, but because of the outlook on life,” she stresses.
the job, A “hybrid” between literary genres“It opened the way for me to play more, to encourage myself to make mistakes,” he admits.
with A truer life (2019), his previous works, “I was more sure of what was going to happen, not with this, and it was delicious. Readers write to me to thank meTo tell me they feel accompanied, to tell me they laugh on the bus. Many people say to me: “You seem to know me.”
and, “There are also young women who are grateful To talk about the body like that. “The few negative comments came from men,” she adds.
Garland took years to write Move diary, The product of observations, readings and memories Which arose at this moment: “This is how it works.” My mind is disintegrating. “I put it together like a puzzle, and it took me six years.”
He never had a specific goal: “It’s as if I feel like something wants to be said and I tell it. I start writing without knowing what I’m doing until suddenly I realize there’s a book there.”
To Garland He is “honoured” by it Move diary It is seen as a feminist bookBecause she appreciates women’s struggle for equality throughout history.
“I thank all women’s rights activists, since the early suffragettes. I aspire to a world of equality. Even if the path has mistakes, you have to try, correct, fall, rise….”
The author believes that social change is in the process of being implementedHe added: “Despite the current setbacks, there are movements that are committed to not disappearing. I hope this will be their last death throes.”
Although he realizes that there are men who try to understand what women ask for, he considers that the matter is complicated for his generation: “I think young people are also lost on how to communicate. “There is a revolution in every generation, but it is difficult to ask a 60- or 70-year-old person to change.”
“We have to review our way of thinking. The woman in my book (one of the characters in “A Movement Diary”) is told that you can’t accept a drink if you don’t want to go to bed. I wonder who said that? “These are ideas that are so entrenched in the culture that they are difficult to dismantle, and if we don’t start, women will continue to bear the blame.”