*"How does a Venezuelan migrant survive in Bogotá while besieged by depression and the voice of madness, trapped in a fractured marriage, with a child who dries her tears, and whose only source of kinship is literature? She writes. She writes letters to her friend F., pouring into them her yearning to inhabit words, her daydreaming reveries, her poems—'trash can filler' and 'her own nonsense,' as she calls her writings. In these letters, she also recounts what it means to leave a country with no place for her and arrive in another where her nationality erases her individuality.

The novel that won the Universidad Central Novel Contest in 2019 sheds light on the vortex of a transnational social crisis and a public health issue, told through the deeply intimate lens of a first-person narrative that flows boldly and authentically between epistolary prose and free verse, between past and present—in the end, between consciousness and the abyss of what takes hold of her voice."*
(Source, translated from Spanish by Archivo Venezuela)

*"In 2018, like more than a million of her compatriots, Vaitiere Rojas was forced to flee a Venezuela devastated by economic crisis. Exiled in Colombia, in the outskirts of Bogotá, she finds herself in the skin of the destitute and rejected foreigner. Identifying with K. from The Castle, in a world where nothing is reassuring or comprehensible, she manages to transcend her experience through letters addressed to Kafka.

Through small yet powerful strokes, in vivid and particularly evocative scenes, she captures sur le vif the fate of migrants—the struggle for survival, the overwhelming lack of everything, xenophobia. Tu parles comme la nuit, a true gem of literature, offers us a voice that is both sincere and profoundly moving." (Source, translated from French by Archivo Venezuela).

*"This is a short-format theatrical proposal born from the intention of bringing to light the issues swept under the rug—cases of human rights violations concerning life, property, and family in Venezuela that must be remembered and never forgotten. It is imperative to tell our own stories to remain united in the future and not so distant from our own people. This work is a tribute to the fallen—young individuals who must be remembered, as they embody what we, as a nation, have become, and each of them multiplies within us.

Argonauts of the Eighth Island is grounded in many real stories. Sincere, profound, and direct, it aims for the audience to experience and emotionally connect with the circumstances of its characters—circumstances that are, at the same time, those of an entire nation in crisis, a nation that only recognizes itself in doubt and uncertainty. It is the voice of those who have left, both to the other side of the world and to the other side of life. Its sole intention is to magnify the collateral and irreversible damages of personal and social decisions. Without seeking culprits, without searching for causes: 'Do you realize that we were forced to bring forward our farewells in every family? Like in a war! ... Are we in a war?'

Individual and, at the same time, collective decisions have shaped an undeniable reality that must be examined—a new national map that has become either the solution or the end for many families." (Alfredo Rodríguez Guillén, translated from Spanish by Archivo Venezuela)

For in these poems, love is a reverberation that transforms and subverts, a mode of both individual and collective identification, a process rather than a state or destination. Interwoven with poetry and the figure of César Vallejo, Aunque me extinga becomes a song against pain and abandonment, a collection deeply rooted in the present—a social context that demands our attention and calls for more generous ways of understanding those who leave their homelands behind.

“This book is a hand that pushes us toward life. As the author reminds us: ‘writing is a way to stave off death,’ to build a new nest, a refuge of beauty—one that is not devoid of conflict, but free from violence. That is why, in these pages, there is a voice that moves from the wounds of migration to the creative core of love. Farewell and desire drive language toward the borders of geography, of poetry, and of the body—the true map of hips, feet, and mysteries. With the sensitivity of a great poet, Sofía Crespo Madrid reminds us that writing can also be a home, a land where we can reimagine ourselves and love more intensely.” (Mónica Ojeda, translated from Spanish by Archivo Venezuela)

Source: Candaya