Vean Vé, la negrita habla en Inglés!

He sentido el calor de la ciudad de Nueva York en este último mes, he mirado diariamente el Empire State Building vestido de blanco en estas noches de verano llenas de luz. Estoy despidiéndome del afecto de mi hija y de mi nieto, del azul del cielo del norte y de la placidez del mar. Reburujando entre mis letras encontré esta traducción de mis barujos al Inglés, preñada de sonoridades Pacificas y de sentimientos que no saben viajar de un idioma al otro. Lo regalo en bruto a todos mis ¨gringos monos¨. Vean vé!

I grew up in Chocó; that piece of Colombian soil with the form of a woman’s body, kissed by the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. That soil has many mighty rivers fed by an eternal rain, which settles on all the trees of the jungle, on its exuberant flowers, on its exotic fruits, and that briefly refreshes the burning heat that surrounds it. It is populated in its majority by black people of frank smile, of overflowing tenderness, of boisterous joy. A people with a peculiar way of pronouncing the words, of marking accents not where orthography allows, but where the palpitation orders it. There in Quibdó, its capital, my black nanas entertained and lullabyed me, astonished me with magic and interminable narrations full of flavor, of scent, of cadence and candor, of spicy, ribald humor; of hot desire and labored breath.

All this marking the dom, dorom, dom, dom. Following the drum, competing with the palpitation in one word, entering to the rhythm, maintaining it, eternalizing it, magnifying it. My black nanas made me feel the intensity of the countless rhythms that live in the body, and they gave me the capacity to find them, to feel them, to enjoy them. For me, of all the rhythms, the black rhythm is the slowest, but the most intense. It supposes a communication with the surroundings. It is marked by the daily experience. It is, most of all, coy and sensual.

For this reason, in my stories, each one of the nanas recreates a rhythm capable of transmitting experiences; setting off from a point that is located in their bodies, but that simultaneously travels to enjoy each body, driving the story with an endless intensity that pervades the pores and invites the imagination, to recreate the heated customs of daily life in 1950’s Chocó.

In my stories, is possible to find the enjoyment of recovering the traditional values of Chocó through the collective memory; to emphasize the influence and wealth of the black culture; and to recognize the woman, in particular the black women excelling in their role in the context of a society dominated by the white race.

I choose the short story as a narrative technique, because it is synthetic and globalizing, it describes the experience like an adventure. In order to write them, I have had to let myself go by the path of my own memory, allowing myself to develop situations that indulge in reveries of nostalgia. A sense of nostalgia that comes to fill up empty spaces.

I speak with different words, of tottering loudness, that caress the ear and seem to dance, for that reason I do not use a glossary. I want all those that enter in to my stories to enjoy following the story without the need to decipher meaning, allowing them to use their imagination and to let themselves dream.

Traducción: Mayita Posso con ayuda de Valentina Akerman