Elaine Vilar Madruga (Havana, 35 years old) is moved every time she sees the beaches of Cuba from the plane. The author spends long periods away from the island due to her work and returning home is “like a parenthesis,” she says. He loves the return, despite the fact that every time he sees a Cuba that has changed, a deteriorated city, sad Cubans, hit by a harsh economic crisis that throws hundreds of thousands away from its shores. “I see sadness and I experience that sadness, but when I arrive I am surrounded by love,” says the writer, who has her family on the island, including her 85-year-old grandmother and her dog, for whom she made a promise to stop drink coffee when the mutt got sick. Vilar Madruga claims that he drank 12 cups a day. “I’ve been clean for four years,” she says smiling, as if she had detoxed from alcohol or a drug.
This autumn morning he has a hot chocolate in a cafeteria in Mexico City where he speaks with EL PAÍS. The morning is cold and there is a lot of movement in the place, the capital’s residents taking a break from the fast-paced life of the city to warm up with a drink. Vilar Madruga’s chocolate gets cold when talking, because the writer is a great conversationalist. Generous with time and open to talking about everything, including the Cuban crisis. He has traveled to Mexico to present his novel on Tuesday night The jungle sky (Elefanta editorial), a book that is difficult to classify. Gothic story, wild novel, memories that heal ancient wounds. Vilar Madruga affirms that his literature is “mestizo” and has a lot of the experiences of the women in his family, his mother, his grandmothers. In fact, he says, he learned to make literature by sticking to his grandmother’s stove, listening to her stories and also knowing those of the family, who often remain silent. “All my work is written in a feminist key,” she says.
The novel takes place in a hacienda built in the middle of a dark jungle. An old woman, her two daughters—one of them crazy—and a man live there. The jungle is a black hole that is also a kind of paradise for these beings who have fled from a war, but paradise has its rules and to keep it calm you have to sacrifice your children. Fugitives pass through the hacienda and end up impregnating the women, whose function is to give birth to feed that god who nests in the terrifying jungle. The jungle feeds them and they must feed it with terrible sacrifices: the necks of children slit, the blood nourishing that Saturn that demands the life of its children. The work, the author explains, “is designed to serve as a cape, because a jungle can be the family, a country, a body, a political system” that oppresses. Vilar Madruga has written what has been considered one of the best novels published last year and the Cuban author is making great strides among the most recognized young names in Latin American literature.
Ask. Let me read an excerpt from your book: “When you name a creature, be it human or chicken, pig or mare, you give it an identity, a space in the world. “No one would kill a mare named Iphigenia, but they would kill a girl named that.” It can be understood as the little value that has been given to women over the centuries, right?
Answer. Clear. The novel itself is a criticism of the patriarchal system, which does not come from four previous generations, but is a millennia-old story. It is also a criticism of how we treat children, because we often treat them as subaltern creatures.
P. The book is written in a feminist key.
R. Yes, I believe that all my work is written in a feminist key. I don’t think that just because I am a woman I would have to be a feminist, I think they are two concepts that you learn in life. I learned to be a feminist. In my country it was taken for granted, for example, that you are a woman and have guaranteed rights, but I have had to learn that there are rights that are achieved and that there are many patriarchal structures from the home to the political sphere.
P. How did you learn to be a feminist?
R. I think reading a lot. It has helped me a lot to read the Latin American authors that accompany me, because when you find a book you are finding company and learning.
P. Who are those authors who accompany her?
R. Elena Garro, which I think is an incredible discovery. Clarice Lispector too. For me they were a very recent discovery and I say this without shame. Formation also comes from the way the home is deconstructed. I come from a matrilineal line and I tell the stories of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, because they are very strong currents within my thinking, because I was educated by women. I learned to make literature by sticking to the stove from my grandmother, who told me my first stories, because I believe that my grandmother is a budding writer. Making food was mixed with making literature. When you realize that you are telling the stories of your great-grandmother and that in some way you are giving voice to all those furies, to all those desires that were truncated, to all those stories that were not told, you realize that you must do it from a feminist perspective. For example, my maternal great-grandmother was going to be the first woman in Cuba to get divorced, you can tell me if that is not a feminist act.
P. What happened?
R. Her father did not allow it and they left her with a six-month-old belly and two small children in the house of her husband, who was an exploiter, a cockplayer, a womanizer, who ended up ruining the entire family. And also to give birth to seven more children. But to me it seems like a revolutionary act that a woman at that time said I’m going to get divorced, I’m going to do it because I can’t stand this and I’m going to reinvent myself.
P. It’s a theme for a novel.
R. It is a novel in itself and that novel is spinning in my head. I think that somehow all those spirits, all those auras of my great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers, are in The jungle skyare present in the same fury that the jungle contains.
P. In this novel there is a dark circle: giving birth and killing, giving children to the jungle to calm their anger. Women reduced to reproduction, men to jungle food. Motherhood turned into something wild. How do you see motherhood?
R. Like a great unknown. I am trying to answer what motherhood is for me and I have reached a cycle of four novels trying to have that answer. I am finishing the fourth and it will be the last and I hope to have an answer when I finish it. I think a lot about biological motherhoods, but I also think about non-biological motherhoods, which are subaltern motherhoods, the aunts who decided not to give birth, the people who mother animals, the caregivers; all those motherhoods that we forget, because we have placed biological motherhood on a sacrosanct altar and we have said that this is the only one worth telling about. And it is not told well either, because we tell it in a very sweet way.
P. In her book there are women condemned to give birth and stop being useful when they can no longer be useful, condemned to the kitchen, to slaughter chickens, to be in charge of feeding others. It sounds like a complaint. Do you think that literature is also denunciation?
R. Literature is a testimony of what we are experiencing, it is telling us that we cannot close our eyes, we cannot pretend that we do not know in order to be in a more comfortable place. We have to be responsible for what is happening, we cannot write from our privileges. For me, literature is denunciation, it is testimony and it is trying to find a point on the map where we stand and mark it so that we do not forget.
P. You don’t like labels being put on your literature, how would you define it?
R. Mestiza, because I am a mestizo woman, a woman from the Caribbean, which is an ajiaco of races, colors, influences, references. I have never felt like I belonged or was chained to a gender. I think that in the world we live in, which is a migrant world, literary genres have also become migrants, because they resemble the bodies of the people who write them. My body is a migrant, yes, it is anchored in Havana, because my family is there, but I spend the whole year in different parts of the world.
P. He has written poetry, short stories, narrative, theater. What is writing for you?
R. It is a game, dark and light at the same time. Dark because one talks about very strong things and opens one’s gut to write, one tears one’s skin. And luminous because writing is also healing, I feel that it has helped me heal.
P. Heal what?
R. Heal the wounds of the traumas of the past, the stories of my ancestors, the silence, which is so terrible, those things that were not said and that I have suddenly turned into a platform to communicate, because I have managed to tell the stories of my family.
P. The silence imposed on women, reduced to the stove.
R. Yes. The one about us women who put gags on ourselves to survive, because we knew that if we spoke they could kill us or beat us to silence or even let us die of hunger, because we didn’t have autonomy until recently. I would like to reclaim that literature that was made in the kitchen, my grandmother’s stories.
P. I mentioned migrants before. Cuba is going through a difficult situation. Thousands of young people leave the island due to lack of opportunities and freedom, it is a huge flight of talent. Are you worried about the impact that might have?
R. Obvious! The departure of talents, the loss of references for those who stay, because it is not only what the country loses in human quality, because the soul of the country is crumbling, but I also think about those who stay, how they do it , how broken it is. Cuba has been a migrant country, but in recent years it has been brutal. I have lost many people and saying goodbye is also a form of death.
P. Can you write under a regime like that?
R. I write and I see many acts of resistance in writing. I am a creative writing teacher and I see my twenty-something boys writing and determined that literature can save something, first of all, that it is leading them to a better place. You can write in any circumstance, no matter how adverse it may be, because writing is always an act of resistance.
P. How do you see the Cuban revolution?
R. It is the revolution of my grandparents. My grandmother speaks with great love about the revolution and I saw good things about the revolution. I was educated privilegedly, I studied music, I had a spectacular education. I have also seen a gradual deterioration in the living conditions of my loved ones and my compatriots.
P. Are you disillusioned with the revolution?
R. I’m disappointed with how things are going. I am still a left-wing woman. I don’t know if the left has a solution for all the world’s problems, but I am sure that the right thinks of itself from a privilege. I want to save what my grandparents and parents instilled in me, the right to education, culture, health for all.
P. Cover could be that jungle that devours its daughters and sons.
R. Cuba and the whole world. Many countries devour their children. The jungle sky It is not a work that is designed within Cuba, but rather it is designed to serve as a layer, because a jungle can be the family, a country, a body, a political system.