
Portbou
A Catalan Memoir; with Stories from We, Women
Maria Merce Roca(Author)
Pinyon Publishing
Published on 20. July 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
136 pages
978-1-936671-66-3 (ISBN)
Description
Maria Mercè Roca’s tender narratives illustrate the potency of language: "the supplications were like a song and if I said them over and over I became drunk from the rhythm and the words, in a kind of ecstasy." A profound security is derived through shared conversations, as when her father picks her up from school: "You carry the suitcase and, at first, we walk fast without saying anything as if we were afraid they’d make us go back. When we’ve covered a bit of distance we look at each other and begin to laugh. … I calm down and … nothing seems so tragic any more." As well as wounds incurred and deepened by silence. From a trauma of police brutality scraping at the interior mind and body—to a child punished by her mother’s refusal to speak or look at her. Many layered, the architecture of steps, ceilings, and train tracks structure the waxing and waning of human life and death.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
209 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-936671-66-3 (9781936671663)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Maria Mercè Roca is a prominent Catalan writer who has published numerous novels, books of short stories, texts for young people, and has written for Catalan television. She has received some of the most prestigious prizes in Catalonia for her work. After recent years in the Catalan Parliament as a member of a party promoting independence, Ms. Roca has returned to writing full time with the publication of another novel, Al final, t'agradaré (You Will Like Me in the End).