Born in Venezuela but raised in Bolivia, Magela Baudoin leaves her mark on literature through her work and as one of the founders of the publishing house Mantis Narrativa.
This is an adapted excerpt from a conversation on the Hablemos, escritoras podcast, hosted by Adriana Pacheco.
Adriana Pacheco: A writer, journalist, and editor with works translated into English, Portuguese, and Arabic, and published across Latin America, Spain, Egypt, and the United States, Magela Baudoin is also the co-editor of Mantis Narrativa alongside Giovanna Rivero. She is the winner of the Gabriel García Márquez Hispano-American Short Story Prize. Magela Baudoin, thank you so much for accepting this invitation. You’re originally from Venezuela, but you’ve been living in Bolivia for many years, right?
Magela Baudoin: Yes, well, both of my parents are Bolivian. I’m one of five children, and we were all born in Venezuela because my parents left Bolivia for political reasons in 1971 and spent many years in Venezuela. So, I went to Bolivia when I was around 18 years old. I always say that I am doubly Bolivian because I’ve chosen to be, and I am, of course, Venezuelan as well, because childhood has a strong influence on our identity and formation. This has sometimes made the issue of belonging complicated and conflicted, with the feeling of not truly belonging anywhere, of being a permanent foreigner. In Venezuela, we were always the outsiders in some way, because my parents—especially my father—never fully accepted the idea of staying there. He had this incurable longing, and he eventually returned to politics. In 1981, during the dictatorship of García Mesa, he went back to Bolivia to secretly help Juan Lechín Oquendo, the historic Bolivian labor leader. And, well, he spent a long time going back and forth between the two countries. When we returned to Bolivia, I mean when we went there—it wasn’t that we returned, rather, we went there—we were also foreigners. This condition leaves you like those air plants, with your roots always exposed. Later, I moved to Santa Cruz, and now I’m in the United States. So, there’s no choice but to sprout in the air, which has its charm, especially nowadays.
A.P.: You’re in Oregon because you’re studying at the university there, right?
M.B.: Yes, I’m pursuing a doctorate in literature and Romance languages with a scholarship that allowed me to come with my children. I have three kids—two are with me, and one is already studying elsewhere. My thesis project focuses on learning about women’s creative laboratories and how they arise. In addition to fiction, I’m interested in how philosophical thinking or thinking about art is embedded in these writings. It’s always been assumed that theorization is a masculine space because women have historically occupied a marginal position in literature. While that’s less true today, in some ways, it still is. Identifying these thoughts that, beyond fiction, offer a philosophical or poetic reflection on art is very intriguing to me. I think of a writer like, I don’t know, María Negroni, who’s always innovating and simultaneously reflecting on the craft itself. I find that very appealing. Cristina Rivera Garza also interests me in that sense. This testimony within writing is something I’m deeply interested in.
A.P.: Such a great and important topic. Magela, you won the Gabriel García Márquez Hispano-American Short Story Prize in 2015. You were also a finalist for the Premio Ribera del Duero from Páginas de Espuma for your book Solo vuelo en tu caída. Before that, you won the 2014 National Novel Award for El sonido de la H. What has this meant for you?
M.B.: Well, thank you very much. I believe awards are very important within the cultural industry because they offer a platform, a showcase that gives visibility to a work and a literature. In the case of Bolivia, I think this is really important. Awards can also profile or bring to light something beyond a particular work. But having said that, in the end, an award is just a circumstance. If you’ve read two books with real attention, you know that an award can also mean very little. So, while it’s interesting and important, for me, it’s more of a reaffirmation that I’m on the right path.
A.P.: Tell us about this book, Solo vuelo en tu caída, which was a finalist for the Premio Ribera del Duero.
M.B.: Yes, this book originated from a story I wrote. As a child, I had an obsessive fixation on the figure of Mengele. I remember the impact of The Boys from Brazil and the character who experimented on twins, injecting them with chemicals, often focusing on their eyes. This served as a trigger for the story and, in that sense, I think the book functions as a creative laboratory where the experience of writing mirrors the experience of reading. That is, writing emerges from lived experiences, and reading is also an experience—just as real and lived as the events of life itself. I really like what Cristina Rivera Garza says, which I mention at the end of the book, that reading is a space of production rather than consumption, a production of meaning. And what else is imagination if not that? So, this book gathers the memories of my readings: Pavese, Greek mythology, Hamlet, Maeterlinck, Pizarnik, Carroll, Chekhov. We encounter characters like a Naymara woman, an addict in Medellín, a little girl from Santa Cruz who has been raped, and an Argentine woman who loses her memory. I think there’s an epic quality to the characters—a certain value that deeply moves me and that I really enjoy. Memory here becomes a protean space for generating fiction.
A.P.: An excellent book. Magela, when you received the Gabriel García Márquez Hispano-American Short Story Prize, in your speech, you spoke about the importance of addressing the lives of Indigenous girls. Tell us a little about how you crafted those words to use that platform to say something beyond just giving thanks.
M.B.: Well, first of all, it was a big surprise—I didn’t think I was going to win, so I improvised those words on the spot. Although, of course, the reflection (a very quick one) on the issue of Indigenous girls in Bolivia probably relates to one of my favorite stories in this book, “La cinta roja.” It’s about an Indigenous group on the verge of disappearing, and a girl who is murdered, raped, and eventually avenged by the community because justice fails them. At that moment, I thought about her, and I realized just how much we still have to do as a society. Being a girl and being Indigenous in Bolivia still often means facing a failed destiny due to the lack of opportunities within the state itself.
A.P.: Of course, that story is very moving. Another important story, which gives the book its title, La composición de la sal, is an absolutely beautiful piece.
M.B.: Yes, well, it’s a story that came from several creative impulses. It took me a long time to find its pulse, to turn it into what it eventually became. The first creative impulse was the image of this old man overwhelmed with tears—a grandfather who becomes feminized. The sea is a polyvalent symbol in the story. I wanted it to represent a kind of womb, a place that could receive this feminized man, who has lost a son and is in that stage of trying to understand the pain he hasn’t allowed himself to feel. The second idea that emerges in the story is about the sea itself, which, for Bolivia, is a conflicted fantasy, laden with pain and frustration. At the same time, it serves as a symbol for everything we haven’t been able to achieve, everything we never became.
A.P.: Do you feel that your stories speak to one another? That they revisit a certain theme repeatedly?
M.B.: I don’t know, my inquiry isn’t like that. I don’t write in that way. I don’t approach it thematically. It’s not like I say, “Today, I’m going to write about feminism.” On the contrary, my inquiry always comes from an image. But yes, it’s true, I’m a conceptual writer. I need that image to form a concept for me, and I believe that’s a deviation from poetry, as if each image carries a metaphor within itself. I like to work with that, to play around with it. Sometimes I do that before writing, but often, it also unfolds during the writing process.
A.P.: El sonido de la H, published by Santillana in 2015, is a very interesting book. You begin it in extremis, meaning the end at the beginning. And you open with a death or a funeral. Tell us where this book and its start come from and about some of the themes you touch on in it.
M.B.: Well, I’m glad you mention it because one of the challenges in writing this novel was precisely that—deciding to start with the ending, which is always making a promise. What this means is that the what is no longer as important as the how things happened. That shifts the focus onto the characters and what’s inside them. I think that was one of the most interesting challenges with this character.
El sonido de la H is also a coming-of-age novel, a story of female initiation, with female characters. One is Rafaela, a queer character, a trans person who knows very well what she wants in life, and the other is Mar, a girl who is, above all, filled with questions. In that sense, Mar is observing the women around her and copying models from them.
A.P.: Tell us about the project you have with Giovanna Rivero, Mantis Narrativa, and the challenges you’ve faced as editors.
M.B.: I think the main challenge has been material restrictions. There’s always this desire to publish many more women writers than we can, and leaving some out is frustrating. But at the same time, it forces us to keep moving forward and to expand over time. In other words, this restriction on the horizontal level forces us to narrow down, but on the vertical level—looking ahead—it pushes us to take a longer view. I think that’s a way to ensure that the limitation doesn’t become an insurmountable obstacle.
And, well, maybe I can tell you a bit about Mantis Narrativa and where this drive comes from—Giovanna’s and my decision to stop complaining and to contribute to changing the rules of the publishing world. So, we decided to position ourselves in a somewhat risky and even romantic place, by taking a political and aesthetic stance. We decided to publish women writers, but that choice also incorporates our interest in a certain type of writing—works that take risks and transcend basic or obvious quality standards. I believe that this ethos runs through all the initiatives of independent publishers that focus on women writers and are working with this same idea.
A.P.: Well, thank you so much. Magela, your story is incredibly interesting.
M.B.: Thank you very much.
You can listen and read the complete interview in Spanish
on the Hablemos, escritoras website.
Translated by Will Howard
