Mary Gainza not traveled in December to Mexico to receive the prize Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and, from that absence, we shot the speculation swirling about the fate of the prize, endowed with 10,000 dollars. Despite the fact that the bases do not require the presence of the award, the International Book Fair of Guadalajara (FIL), organiser of the prize, decided to suspend the ceremony and referred to a committee the final verdict. The IDF confirmed Monday that it will not withdraw the prize to the author of argentina and, in fact, never proposed such a possibility. The committee will only discuss how, when and where they will perform the new ceremony.
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María Gainza: “There are hundreds of writers better than me,” Mary Gainza achieved the Sor Juana with a plot almost detective-like about the world of art prizes (not) given.- By Leila Guerriero
The cancellation of the event during the week-long celebration of the fair has already raised suspicions, but the controversy was fueled this week by criticism of Leila Guerriero in a column of this journal, which criticised the initial position of the fair, suggested to him the presence of Gainza was a necessary condition for the awarding of the prize. A criticism that was shared on social networks by most writers.
The FIL has wanted to settle the matter by attributing the controversy to a misunderstanding. “For us it is important that the author have a meeting with the public, but at no point was raised as to withdraw the prize. The cash prize will be awarded in the near future and it would be great if you could come, but it will be a decision in conjunction with the author,” says a spokesman for the FIL.
His absence from the ceremony in December had to do with the health of his daughter Lily, 12 years old: the day that her mother was going to get on the plane she was admitted to the hospital suffering from pneumonia with pleural effusion. Gainza (Buenos Aires, 1975), widow since four years ago, I was not going to leave it alone. Interviewed via email by the COUNTRY, the author argentina stressed days later: “I have my head in the health of my daughter.” And on the deliberation of the committee added: “As I said Perón, although some attribute it to Napoleon: ‘If you want that something is not resolved, call a committee’. Perhaps for mexicans to work different and better. There is that wait.”
it is Urgent that the @FILGuadalajara to decide on the prize Sor Juana with justice and empathy! https://t.co/jOgnqdfGlm
— Guadalupe Nettel (@nettelg) January 12, 2020
Asked on Monday by this newspaper with the frequency refresh rates of the controversy, the author preferred not to make any statements and referred to any position in its editorial. From Barcelona, sources of Anagram confirmed that “the FIL as we had ensured that the prize itself is going to grant”. The winning work by the prestigious contest mexican, instituted thirty years ago to highlight the best novel published in Spanish by a woman, is The black light, his second title, a weft detective about fakes in the art world.
Gainza, for years art criticism, suffers from a neuromuscular disease, autoimmune that the forces limiting the travel and conditions in his public life. The international recognition of his first novel, The optic nerve, published in 2014 by an independent publisher in argentina –Wildly – and relanzanda in 2017 by Anagrama fired the speculations romantic, so of taste in the industry, about its fame as the author dodges, his little hobby to the interviews and the photographs.
In his column, Leila Guerriero, he pointed out that “Mary Gainza is reserved and almost does not perform public presentations. Many male colleagues do the same thing, but in women it tends not to be perceived as self-preservation, but as a symptom of phobia or divismo reverse. That position in life can do that many behaviors are not necessarily derived from it are deemed as confirmation that the author is “difficult” and, therefore, able to use excuses to evade public commitments”. And she closed with a message for the prize Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: “the award gives for granted that there is something specifically feminine in any of the literature and, therefore, also assumes that the life of women is endowed with difficulties and/or facilities characteristics of the genus (applicable, for example, to raise a child alone)”.
