Una història trepidant amb moltes sorpreses, narradada des d'un punt de vista actual que et situa amb noves maneres de viure les relacions juvenils fora de l'àmbit familiar. Cada personatge és diferent i especial i ha d'aprendre a acceptar les seves característiques i les de les companyes que l'envolten.
Valors de sempre però des de una òptica diferent. Molt bones il·lustracions.

Segnalato

Nuriagarciaturu | Jul 31, 2022 |

El flautista de Hamelín di Bel Olid

Una nueva visión del cuento clásico, con una adaptación moderna de los cuentos y leyendas más celebres.

Segnalato

Natt90 | Jul 18, 2022 |

Hairless: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Hair… di Bel Olid

Manifesto for Hair
Review of the Polity Press Kindle eBook edition (February 2022) translated by Laura McGloughlin from the Catalan language original "A contrapelo. O por qué romper el círculo de depilación, sumisión y autoodio" (Against the Grain: Or Why Break the Cycle of Hair Removal, Submission and Self-Hatred) (November 2020)

I was so impressed with the variety in Bel Olid's collection of short stories Wilder Winds (orig 2016/translation Jan 2022) that I immediately looked for further translations of her work. I found it in Hairless, which is also a translation by Laura McGloughlin. This later work though is non-fiction and is Olid's essay about the social norms and perceptions that drive the hair removal industry for women. It was fascinating to read about how these views change over time especially from earlier centuries when female bodies were more covered and how peer pressure (often driven by forces such as the cosmetics and 'beauty' industry) can manipulate reactions and practices.

But the long-term effects on the self-esteem of future women are clear: we are teaching girls to give way to the autocracy of society’s control of their bodies, to reject their bodies as they are and modify them (even through painful procedures) in order to conform to an increasingly inflexible norm and submit to the tyranny of external ‘desirability’. Because, if indeed, among the ‘body police’, there are boys and girls, women and men, this police always argues in favour of the male gaze and appoints the heterosexual man as a judge of what is desirable: ‘no one will want you with that hair’ (assuming that ‘no one’ equates to ‘no real man’).

Regardless of sexual orientation, showing body hair publicly is a kind of neon billboard saying ‘I don’t follow the gender norm of hair removal’, and any derailment in gender expression breaks the mirage of heterosexuality by default. For that reason, the supposed choice between shaving or not is never innocent. Not doing so places you on the side of the rebels.

Obviously this is completely outside of my bailiwick, but the entire essay was food for thought about these issues, esp. the creepy and somewhat pedophilia-implied inference that a desire for hairlessness is a return to prepubescence.

It’s fascinating that the hairless body, the fruit of a social mechanism such as hair removal, is considered a sign of innate femininity. It would be logical for body hair, which separates the girl from the woman, to be considered intrinsically feminine (and even sexy). However, we’ve reached the point where it’s the contrary. And I find that deeply worrying.

… (altro)

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alanteder | Jun 21, 2022 |

Wilder Winds di Bel Olid

Powerful & Moving Shorts
Review of the Fum d'Estampa paperback (January 2022) translated by Laura McGloughlin from the Catalan language original "Els vents més salvatges" (March 2016)

I'll declare my bias immediately that due to my own Baltic Estonian heritage my rating is motivated by this book having stories related to several national independence movements or peoples' uprisings. In microcosm, the other stories have the same resonance, with their tales of individual coming of age, childhood struggles, sexual awakening, relationship issues, women's identity, immigration and refugees.

The stories and the book are short, 16 stories in 79 pages, but it is all the more impactful for that. I did notice that the Catalan original is 144* pages, but all 16 original stories are translated in this English language edition, so the difference must be due to spacing. The Fum d'Estampa Press edition is tightly packed, without blank separating pages between stories.

Story synopses:
1. She's A Woman A young girl/woman has encounters in a household where she is temporarily staying with her aunt which influence her perceptions of life forever after.
2. Static A young woman drives to her mother's birthday while remembering the comfort that the white noise of early onscreen TV screen static gave to her in childhood.
3. Sea of Maimunà A young girl travels along with her aunt, who volunteers at a refugee camp whose inhabitants live in shipping containers. She makes friends with a refugee girl named Maimunà.
4. Anna, Anne, Anna A woman remembers her childhood and her attachment to an abandoned tattered copy of The Diary of Anne Frank which she picked up off the street. Her mother told her "That book is for adults... Don't read it anymore." After her mother throws the book away, even later in life when she could have obtained another copy, instead:

But I preferred not to. There are memories that shine like a brand-new coin on the pavement when touched by the midday sun and you, walking with your head bowed and looking at the ground, wake up suddenly, pick it up and feel you are very lucky. That, I still carry in my pocket.

5. Baba Luba (Ukrainian: Granny Luba). An older woman joins the protesters of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution (2004/05) at the Maidan (Independence Square) while carrying a mirror to reflect the images of the regime's enforcement troops back on to themselves.
6. Windows A woman becomes obsessed with observing a neighbour through her windows.
7. Red While scavenging for food in the midst of an unidentified city's wartime siege, a young girl becomes fixated by the scene of a woman giving birth in the ruins.
8. Wild Flowers Gabriela travels to an isolated rural house left to her by her grandmother where she paints and gathers flowers. She returns to Lisbon where she meets her partner Arnaldo in the midst of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution (1974).
9. Sybille The protagonist becomes an apprentice to a shoemaker named Sybille, and in turn seeks to mentor their own successor.
10. Plus Ultra Probably the most difficult story to define and understand. Appears to be a science fiction tale of a future world where most of humanity has been eradicated by the immortal survivors who gather frozen relics of life.
11. Linda Vignettes of three women in reaction to cat-calling on the street.
12. Invisible The protagonist travels (while fare-jumping) from their room to their factory job in a warehouse district and thinks about the "city where every day so many people live without living."
13. Three A woman looks back on her life and her own three children after she has retired from her job as a supervisor in a prison nursery where the children of inmates are sent away for adoption when they turn the age of three.
14. Sand Through Her Fingers A woman takes a teaching job to language/learning challenged children (possibly refugee children?) at a beach town away from her own family. She swims at the beach in her free time and lets the sand run through her fingers while remembering her own childhood.
15. Cabaret In an interview, a woman laments her life after being required to lose weight after a heart attack.
16. Dainuojanti Revoliucija (Lithuanian: Singing Revolution) Vignettes of several of the martyr families and some participants of the Lithuanian Singing Revolution (1987-1991) in the Baltic States. Specifically the events of Bloody Sunday January 13, 1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

I read Wilder Winds as the December 2021 selection from the Republic of Consciousness Book of the Month (BotM) club. Subscriptions to the BotM support the annual Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.

Trivia and Links
* You can examine an excerpt from the original Catalan edition including its index page at the publisher Editorial Empúries' site here.

If you are reading this before January 20, 2022 you can still register for the (free) book release event for Wilder Winds organized by Fum d'Estampa Press and October Books on Eventbrite here.

As far as I can determine, Wilder Winds is the first published English language translation of a work by Bel Olid, but there is another one coming up very shortly, the non-fiction based "Hairless: Breaking the Vicious Circle of Hair Removal, Submission and Self-Hatred" (expected publication May 2022), also translated by Laura McGloughlin from the Catalan language original "A contrapelo. O por qué romper el círculo de depilación, sumisión y autoodio" (November 2020).… (altro)

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alanteder | 1 altra recensione | Jan 19, 2022 |

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