Marcela Serrano

Marcela Serrano Pérez (Santiago, 1951) is a Chilean writer and plastic artist.

Biography

Daughter of novelist Elisa Pérez Walker (literary pseudonym: Elisa Serrana, 1930-2012) and essayist Horacio Serrano, Marcela is the fourth of five sisters (Elena «Nena», lawyer; Paula, psychologist; Margarita, journalist; and Sol, historian). She studied at the Villa María Academy, and spent a year in Paris with two of her sisters studying.

She left Chile again in exile in Rome after the military coup of September 11, 1973 with her first husband, Eugenio Alberto Llona, whom she had married in November of that year and with whom she would separate later, without children.

Marcela Serrano returned in 1977. About the years spent in exile, Serrano writes: "Exile. First, before exile I had lived in Paris for a year as a student, it must have been four years after 1968, when all the germs of the May Revolution were in the air, and I went with two of my sisters, according to us to learn french. We froze our studies in Santiago and went to live there. It was a fascinating experience, really exciting. We learned French, but we also learned many other things. Then I returned to Chile and the coup came. There I had the Italian exile; it was our turn, one did not decide when he was a member of a party, and I had an exile in Rome. Rome itself was a privilege. The warmth of the Italians, the reception they gave us, their solidarity was wonderful, but we had to live in conditions that I didn't even realize. I had had a pretty regalo life before that, at my parents' house, so it was very hard. In the end I turned back".

He studied Fine Arts at the Catholic University, where he obtained a degree in Engraving in 1983. His first exhibition was organized in the eighties; She worked in different fields of visual arts —in particular, installations and body art—, and she went on to win an award from the Museo de Bellas Artes de Santiago for a work on women in southern Chile. However, after a short time she completely abandoned her artistic activities.

Literary life

She considers herself a "late writer" —"I started writing at 38 and I only published my first novel at 40"— although as a girl she wrote "dozens of novels", which she threw out all of them. That first novel appeared in 1991: We who love each other so much, which was an immediate success that year and would later receive two awards. Since then, she has published a series of works, including one in the noir genre and another for children, the latter jointly with Margarita Maira, one of her daughters.

Chilean critic Camilo Marks points out that "one of the keys to explaining Marcela Serrano's success as a novelist is that she knows what she is writing about and not only does it well, but also summons, clearly and without of affectation, some issues that today surround the beleaguered world of contemporary women".

In 2001, Argentine director Héctor Olivera made Antigua vida mía a movie and offered Serrano to write the script, but she preferred not to. "I have never written a script and it seemed to me that accepting it would be a form of improvisation. In addition, at that moment I was extremely concentrated writing a novel and had no internal time for another creative adventure. By not writing the script myself, I had to open myself to having someone else do it, with the risks of the case for the purposes of fidelity. But that is when one makes an act of faith in the director to whom you have given the novel and you let it go". The script was written by Ángeles González Sinde and Alberto Macías and the film, starring Ana Belén, Cecilia Roth, Daniel Valenzuela, and Jorge Marrale.

The same year, his first novel, We who love each other so much (1991) was adapted for the stage by the play's director, Christian Villarreal, and the playwrights Lucía de la Maza and Francisca Bernardi. The premiere took place on October 5 at the San Ginés Theater in Santiago.

During a promotional tour for So long, little women, while in a hotel in Lima in 2004, "suddenly, she felt an intense burst of palpitations; then the cold, paralyzing sweat: she thought she was dying of a heart attack. The doctor who examined her recommended that she abandon the tour and return to her house, which she did; Her definitive diagnosis was & # 34; severe stress & # 34;, and as a result of it Marcela Serrano left public life for years; she reappeared in 2011 to promote Ten Women.

The plot of this novel Pedro Gandolfo, critic of El Mercurio, sums it up like this: "A prominent psychoanalyst psychiatrist, Natasha, invites nine female patients to meet in a plot near a Santiago with the purpose that each of them -who previously did not know each other- recount their lives in public in a kind of final act of appeasement and, in this way, conclude the therapy with a "healing"; - to the extent that the complexities of the psyche allow - that has a certain convergence in Natasha herself. There is also an "eleventh woman", an Argentine that Natacha met when she was young when they were studying at the University in Buenos Aires, who has been her assistant and close friend of hers for many years.;. And at the end of his criticism, Gandolfo gives the following verdict: & # 34; It should be noted that Serrano has good prose, simple and clear, which is easy to read. The novel, however, seems to fail in its attempt to portray ten different lives in 300 pages. There are ten different biographies in a single novel, biographies that only have what has been pointed out in common: being women, Natasha's patients, and being 'somewhat neurotic'. The art of the brief biography (and these are brief) is a major art, extremely complex, which implies great skill in the selection of the narrated facts. The literary account of a life is not similar to the historical-biographical account and, sometimes, Ten Women yields to a string of events, which, like the dates of the kingdoms, mark out these lives. Thus, the sensitivities, images and specific details are lost in the naked, superficial and accelerated account of the facts. Telling the other side of these, in a short story, requires less information than appealing to the filigree that defamiliarizes them".

In general, critics have not treated her well in her country, which has led to angry responses from Serrano. Thus, in October 2011, she said on Radio Cooperativa: & # 34; There is a group of critics who are misogynists, who hate everything that has to do with women. They hate women being successful. I don't know if you remember how Isabel Allende has been treated throughout all these years [...] It has been established as a system that it is free to take the shit out of women writers. It's free. They started doing it with Isabel, then they continued with me".

Serrano has always been on the left and "has been committed to the political reality of her country"; defender of the claims of her sex, maintains that "to define oneself as a feminist is to define oneself as a human being". Book of Guadalajara, in which Chile is the guest country. “I do not want my long and good relationship with Mexican readers to be mediated by a government that I do not support or represent me. The government includes people who caused the cultural blackout in Chile, used censorship and tried to annihilate thoughts other than the official one,” she pointed out.

Her novels have been translated into several languages.

Her third husband is the socialist politician and diplomat Luis Maira —Chilean ambassador to Mexico and Belize (1997-2003) and Argentina (2004-2010)—, with whom she has lived since the mid-1980s (with her second, the renowned writer Antonio Gil, had his daughter Elisa). Her other daughter, Margarita, the result of her union with Maira, was born in the first house they shared, in Ñuñoa. Later they had a house in Pocuro, Santiago, and, finally, they live in separate apartments in Providencia. In addition, she bought a house in Quillota where she spends long periods of time writing.

Literary Awards

• Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 1994 por We love each other so much.
• Municipal Literature Award for Santiago 1994 So you don't forget me
• Finalist of the 2001 Planet Award What is in my heart

Works

• We love each other so much., Los Andes, Santiago, 1991
• So you don't forget me, Los Andes, Santiago, 1993
• Old life of mine, police novel, Alfaguara Mexico, Mexico City, 1995
• The shelter of sad women, Alfaguara Mexico, Mexico City, 1998
• Our Lady of Solitude, Alfaguara Mexico, Mexico City, 1999
• A strange worldMondadori, 2000. It contains two "Mexican contacts": Love in the time of dinosaurs and No god nor law
• What is in my heart, Planet, 2001
• The Crystal of Fear, tale, with Margarita Maira; Editions B, 2002,
• So long, little ladies., Planet, 2004
• The cryona, Planet, 2008
• Ten women, Alfaguara, 2011
• Sweet enemy of mine, stories, Alfaguara, 2013. It contains 20 stories:
  • The mare, Damascus and pumpkins, Missions, Bubble of turbid water, No god nor law, I got the flag., Electrical pig, Females (A diversion), His north, The robbery, In Bosnia, The spa, Autumn, The man of the valley, Sweet enemy of mine, The witness, About the vulcanizer, The comfort, Mink and 2 July
• The Ninth, novel, Alfaguara, 2016
• The mantle, Alfaguara, 2019