The promotion of In a stand, The first book “With words” of the editor and photographer Laura C. Vela (Madrid, 31 years), was a mystery within an enigma. The Editorial *Free children, specialized in literature queer, He launched a brief and fragmentary novel of which he told rather little (with all the intention). “People approached for mere curiosity to a work that seemed to deal with the importance of words,” says the author. The interest was growing at the same rate as the recommendations in social networks and some reviews in a few media. From there, since April, it has become a literary phenomenon and was one of the most claimed titles at the last Madrid book fair.
So, was all those people reading with fruition a book about language?
This is the first reference that appears in On a stand that reveals the center of the plot:
I remember the day they called me for megaphone to leave the class and go to direction. Two years ago, an uncle who met online had raped me in his car, in broad daylight. I was 12 and a lot of curiosity. He threatened that, if I counted it, I would spread the video of my rape online, the neighborhood and school.
It is a text, indeed, about the importance of the words, specifically, of which the author had to reappropriate during the three years that she has taken to write the book to be able to tell her story and recover her voice.
“He is stopped giving interviews.” What happened in recent months?
“I’m a little fed up to listen to me.” I have scratched a little because it has focused a lot on sexual abuse. It is a very important autobiographical theme and I have published the book because I think we still have many things to tell about this; But it also tries how it affects family, silence, language, even my own identity.
The origin of this book is in a workshop by the Sabina Urraca writer whom C. Vela attended before confinement. There he read an exercise in which he told a part of what he lived in his adolescence. From that first text this book emerged that its author has managed to call by name when she has reached the bookstores. “I didn’t know what I was writing, really. The words came out alone, I almost vomited them,” he says. What sprouted him describes him as “hard” and “raw.” It was the result of all those talks that I only had with itself. Little by little he freed himself from a part of the slab he has loaded for so many years of silence to such an extent that, he says, now, for the first time since he suffered the abuses, has begun to sleep well.
To rebuild the pieces of this Puzzle, C. Vela has spoken with one of her teachers, with friends and ex -partners. With the stories of those who were close to it those years stuffed the gaps of their memory and, sometimes, rewrite the memories that fiction has been completing.
His family also appears: in the security he found as a child when hugging his mother and getting into his sobaco; That day when they learned what had been happening two years; The nights that escaped to sleep in the bed of one of his sisters; in his statement before the police and in the trial.
They never asked me anything. (…) We all felt ashamed. How have we get here? If we are a very normal family.
His parents and sisters learned that he had written a book when the first review of On a stand In a means of communication: “It seemed to me that, if I told it before, they were going to get angry a lot, because, in the end, even if it is my story, it also touches and affects other people. I was very afraid. If I told it, I could interfere with the writing and editing process.”
–In the book he writes: “At 31 years, my greatest fear is still to lose the love of mom and dad.” How have you reacted?
-Very good. I was surprised. In my family there was silence, it was very difficult, but we were still united and loving ourselves.
For a long time, she was convinced that the book was not going to leave. “When I decided to be published, I realized that it was for two reasons. Restoring my own voice and will that were annulled, because creating something is an exercise of will. And, on the other hand, I believe if we do not put words to these situations and we do not share them, you can get to believe that everything is achieved, that it is isolated cases. That is why it is very important to name and put on the table,” he explains.
When they violate you, you suffer two traumas: the first having been attacked, and the second public trial after telling it. This second trauma is much worse than the first.
“Does a price expose yourself in this way?”
“Yes, be read as a victim and the fear of being treated with paternalism, condescension and penalty.” Something I hate. I am a victim of gender violence and nothing happens. There are many women who are already talking about this and they are told to get attention, why they did not tell him at the time or why they did not report.
Three years in jail and six thousand euros. What victory! He was 17 years old and wanted to leave the subject as soon as possible. I didn’t question it. (…) It was another condemnation for abuse when it should have been a condemnation for pedophilia and rape.
“You denounced.” Remember in the book they told him: “Surely you didn’t like it a bit? Are you inventing it? How much damage have you done to your parents.” Fear, doubt and guilt.
“I don’t know if we are too self -absorbed and we can’t imagine other possible scenarios and other things that can happen to others.” When I explain why I was afraid to tell it, when a conversation is generated as it has happened with the book, any of those people who judged me soon does not take a minute to understand it.
Con On a stand He has invited readers to be part of that internal conversation that had been ruminating for years. “I liked that they told me that despite everything was bright, that he has humor and, above all, having managed not to fall into the cliché, something that was very afraid of me,” he says. “I think it is important to show other people that something horrible can happen to you, but then life continues. It is something that never ends, it never heals, it will always be with me. But perhaps it can serve and accompany.”
She has served her to continue on the way to identify “all those people we are.” The author was one before the rape and it was another later.
“Is that now a new person?”
“I’m changing and probably becomes a third version of me.” I swallowed everything and continued forward. It is also very difficult to ask if when I feel happy it is because I don’t feel anything. If even one day, in 10 years, something will happen to me and I’m going to collapse. That is why it costs me so much to value everything that is happening to me, because just what is difficult for me is to know sometimes how I feel and how I am.
A wooden table and four chairs, smoothes the walls of the house, a trip to Punta Cana, a second -hand car, … (…) all that costs six thousand euros. If it’s good, it will cost you more. Every time something costs six thousand euros, I still think about my violation.