La Jornada: In Pespuntes, Mariana Marsal spins a story of memory and identity

Bicultural relationships, marked by discrimination and colonialism, are the axis of the novel topstitching, which, based on the friendship of a young woman and an older woman, uses “threads, textiles and embroidery as a pretext to talk about things that are much more tragic and heartbreaking,” explains its author, Mariana Marsal.

Regarding the book recently published by the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL), the writer reviewed The Day which tells the story of a young French woman who in the 50s of the last century built a couple with a Martinican man. “I wanted to know how they saw him at that time, how his parents, for example, and the people of Martinique would receive him.”

Marsal (CDMX, 1981) made a research trip to that Caribbean island (overseas department of France, where black people predominate), in which a librarian gave him a lot of information and explained that at that time marrying a white French woman was almost a trophy. “It was interesting to approach that with all the respect and delicacy possible, because things were not seen as they are now,” he mentioned.

Discrimination was a difficult issue for the librarian as well, since it also happens in our country, where, despite the fact that there is great diversity, “we inherited from the Spanish Conquest that classification of skin color that is still rooted in our society and is very harmful.”

He lamented that “we forget history very quickly and continue making the same mistakes. Now there is a form of colonialism that is no longer the same, it does not have the same dynamics as that time, but it exists culturally”; Given this, his novel is a “wake-up call of ‘this thing was happening in this era and can continue to be repeated ad infinitum’”.

Starting from weaving, considered a feminine activity, the diplomat also developed her story, but without “that restricting me. The challenge was to do it in a very literary way. I didn’t want a novel only for women.

“Within the subtlety of the plot and embroidery there is a fatal car accident, as well as important emotional and geographical uprooting of the main characters: Etna, the young Mexican narrator, and Eliane, the old woman who is in a nursing home and suffers from Alzheimer’s.”

Stitches as metaphors

The title refers to a simple but effective type of stitch, also called back stitch, which means that to move forward you sew backwards, which explains its connection with the novel, which is a “construction of identity through memory. To build ourselves, to go forward, we have to go to our memories,” said Marsal.

Etna will help Eliane write a story and will also return to her origins and her family to face unresolved accounts from her past. The second is a fictional character. “There was a lot of research work before writing it, because it happens in four countries – France, Martinique, Spain and Mexico – at various times.”

Another essential angle in the novel is memory, which Mariana Marsal defined as “a very important part of who we are, of our identity as people, as a country, and as a global society,” which is made up of an objective part and a large subjective part.

“I like the idea of ​​addressing that more subjective side. If you have siblings or cousins ​​and an event from your childhood that marked you, they are going to remember completely different things. They all agree that it happened, but one is going to remember it as something super fun and another as something traumatic.”

Marsal highlighted that emotions are instrumental in fixing memories and bringing them to the surface. Just like with Alzheimer’s patients, who can clearly remember things distant in time and not remember what they had for a snack. “One way to rescue them, so that they do not lose their identity, is through emotions.

“There are exercises, for example, of showing old photographs and then more recent ones, reading the letters they wrote to someone or listening to their favorite music, etc. All these elements linked to deep emotions can help the brain become more dynamic and memory and identity rescued.”

In topstitching, The story of a volcanic eruption is another fundamental element, and the name Etna refers to a major volcano located in Sicily. “When she does her work of memory, of reconciliation, it’s like her explosion. That’s where her name makes sense.”

A clue to understanding the narrative is that it is told from the senses. The one in sight is the clearest in the car crash where Eliane’s mother dies and which will be told many times. “It is a traumatic event in his life that will have consequences for his subsequent Alzheimer’s disease.

“How do you hear an accident? There are loud noises, the crash, the rubbing of the car, etc. What does it smell like? What does it taste like? I was interested in having those sensory elements in the story, because they provided another way of not only seeing, but feeling things.”