So well, I'll start in Spanish, and then I'll
switch to English, OK?
So I chose some fragments and well, there
are two stories, as my dear admirado Manuel said.
So there are two stories in this book.
One is mainly Feliciana, the shaman or bruja,
and she's from an indigenous community in Mexico.
I imagined her as an old woman.
And one of the--
very serious conversations about literature.
And one of the main questions that I
had when I was writing this book was the idea of women and power,
and how could I explore through fiction
the idea of a very powerful woman without the economy
or the system because I was exploring that and questioning
myself from a feminist perspective, of course.
What is that intertwining, how they relate,
and how can us, as women, also be powerful and hopefully,
in our two countries, now with female presidents,
or if someone else is not with me in this point.
But yes, I'm very interested in that idea.
Not only as an idea but also as a practice.
And I think power also can occur or happen in
other spaces, other than economy or capital or, you know,
the money, basically.
So Feliciana is a very powerful woman
and her power is in language.
So she's a healer, basically.
An impossible poet also, maybe.
And she makes things happen in language.
So this is a brief introduction of who is she.
So if you don't know Spanish, at least
I hope the musical part aspect of it
can say something because it was something very important
while I was riding this book.
Soy chamana.
Más fácil me dicen curandera.
Así me conocen.
Unos bruja me dicen.
Sí hay una diferencia entre ser curandera y ser chamana.
Una curandera cura las gentes con sus menjurjes y sus hierbas.
Y una chamana también, pero una chamana también puede curar las
cosas que no son del cuerpo.
Puede curar las cosas que no son de las ondas aguas.
Yo curo lo que han vivido las gentes en el pasado y por eso
curo lo que viven en el presente.
Para mí, luego las gentes me dicen que les curo el futuro.
Yo la miro y veo que la trajo Paloma, ?
Pero también la traen otros que ahí la trajeron de la mano.
Paloma me dijo, Feliciana, mi amor, chamana, curandera o bruja
te queda chico, porque tú tienes el lenguaje, tú eres
la curandera del lenguaje.
El libro es tuyo.
Y también Paloma me dijo, Feliciana, mi vida, curar
a los hombres no siempre es necesario
porque esos no siempre andan enfermos,
pero los hombres siempre son necesarios y con esos me
voy a curar yo lo muxe, mi amor.
I am a shaman, but most call me curandera.
That is how I am known.
Some call me a bruja, a witch.
Yes, there is a difference between being a curandera
and being a shaman.
A curandera heals, heals with elixirs and herbs.
A shaman does this also, but a shaman
can heal things that are not of the body.
A shaman can heal things of a deeper waters.
I heal things people have lived in the past,
so I heal what they live in the present.
And so people say that I heal their future.
I look at you and I see that Paloma brought you here.
But others bring you also.
Others led you here by the hand.
Paloma once said to me, she said, Feliciana, love, shaman,
curandera, witch.
Those words are too small for you
because yours is the language.
You are the curandera of the language.
And yours too, is the book.
And Paloma also said once, Feliciana,
love, it's not always necessary to cure mankind
because men aren't always ill, but men are always
necessary and good for what ails the muxe in me, my dear.
OK so muxe, in indigenous languages and ancestry
also, is the idea of queerness.
So Paloma is a muxe.
There specifically from the istmo de Tehuantepec in Oaxaca.
They dress amazingly, and I really
wanted to have a muxe in this in this book.
So paloma is an important character.
She is queer and she's a muxe.
Well, mujer in Spanish means woman.
And muxe is a word for something in between women and men.