In Periferia, Diana del Ángel explores the limits of imagination and narrative

In the story book Outskirts (Almadía), the writer Diana del Ángel explores the surroundings of the imagination and unusual textual records in narrative or fiction, as well as the idea of ​​tenderness in bordering areas.

The writer explained to The Conference who in his text considers tenderness essential as a contrast to the way it is sometimes fictionalized in literature and cinema.

Del Ángel (CDMX, 1982) mentioned that many of his stories are linked to his own experiences, since he grew up in the state of Mexico, where many topics that interest him develop. Those of us who come from the periphery survive largely by imagination, and it was something I wanted to tell.

He referred to stories like Relativity of pathswhich refers to a common sensation when coming from Naucalpan, Ecatepec, Culhuacán or Tláhuac, and Employment spare body advertisementoriginated from the fact that there are people who travel from the City to the state of Mexico and carry a spare cell phone in case they are attacked: was to take these everyday situations to something more imaginative that does not soften the context, but rather allows us to think about the geographical, economic and political hierarchy..

Playing with structures

The author referred to another element that attracts her: Some of the stories are narrated in media that are not exactly the structure of stories, such as advertisements, or journalistic or academic articles; was to show textual records not always associated with narrative or fiction. Play with the idea that there are established literary genres, because in the recent 20 years a lot of work has been done on hybridity.

The writer mentioned that brevity is almost natural in her work. “I also write poetry, and it is usually very short too. I really like brevity, because I feel that it has a revealing character, which I like in literature.

“I like the rhythm of stories and the brevity allows me to maintain it. Another reason is that I started writing this book while I was making the final revisions to my doctoral thesis: I wrote the stories a little to distract myself from this process, which can be a bit tedious.

Stories are structures that allow me to communicate an idea or an image. I really like working in a few words. In them there is a possibility of entering a world for a very short time. The masters of the modern story say that it has to be read in one sitting. It has to have a different impact than the novel, that’s why it is a little closer to poetry.

Each story, a learning

Diana del Ángel said that she wrote some of her stories continuously, but others, such as Lulú cleaning products He started them and then abandoned them for months. “It depends a lot on how I think of them, because some come more from images, like ‘Columba takes the first bite of her’: the vision of a pigeon sitting on the chair in an office where I worked.”

He added that each story meant learning, because he allowed himself to experiment with them. “I had tried to write it many years ago and it hadn’t worked very well. It was also a return to the story and, in some way, each story contributed a lot to my writing process.

Those that are more traditional and realistic are very close to the chronicle, which is something that I had written every day, and they are faster in the narration. It is a state of writing in which I feel comfortable and I like to tell certain things, but for other issues it is important to experiment with other genres and supports.added the narrator.

He noted that in the story Columba takes her first bite leaned towards maintain ambiguity as to whether everything was happening in the protagonist’s mind or if it was happening in reality. That universe allowed precisely those metamorphoses.