Zaragoza, April 2 (EFE).- The Madrid writer Julia Navarro believes that history has ignored women, who have been like footnotes. That is why she believes that “the great pending issue” of the present and future Ministers of Education is “incorporating outstanding women into textbooks.”
The author of books such as ‘Shoot, I’m already dead’ or ‘Tell me who I am’ tells Efe in an interview on her way through Zaragoza why she is taking a hiatus from writing fiction with her new book, ‘A shared story. With them, without them, for them, in front of them’, which she publishes with Plaza & Janés.
Question: After eight great fiction successes, how was this “shared history” born?
Answer: It was like a getaway, like starting a journey, like escaping from the walls of my house and making this journey through my readings, the memories of my trips. So surely this book would not have been written before the pandemic. It is also a book in which I reflect on the traces my reading has left on me.
Q: You describe your new book as “a common place where men and women come together”, because the history of one cannot be understood without that of the other.
A: It has always seemed to me that the story was lame. History has always been told by men and they have told theirs. They have ignored so many women whose lives and whose contributions to the world of art, mathematics, philosophy or music have been truly extraordinary. However, history has ignored them, they have been like footnotes. Except for a few, very few, we have no news of that number of notable women.
The story is incomplete if we are not all. You can’t write a story where there aren’t women and you can’t write a story where there aren’t men. Hence the title of a shared story. When I started writing, I was curious about talking about women’s characters that have had an impact on me. But he said, I cannot count Medea without Jason; I can’t count Penelope without Ulysses; I cannot count Theano without Pythagoras. Or Simone de Beauvoir if not for her relationship with Sartre.
Therefore, it seemed to me that I could not tell a part story. When you look at lives like Isabel of Bohemia’s, you can’t help but think that her relationship with Descartes was really very important and that she cannot be understood without that relationship with the philosopher. And if you stop at Lou Andreas-Salomé, you can’t explain her either if it’s not in relation to men who were important in her time, like Paul Rée, Nietzsche, Freud or Rilke.
I wanted to write the long journey of my reading through the women I have been meeting. But I cannot ignore them, because then we are all always condemned to not understand anything.
Neither in front nor behind, to the side
Q: Are there any of these women who have marked you in particular?
A: I have learned a lot about feminism by reading Doris Lessing and Virginia Woolf: for me they have been fundamental in shaping feminist thought. But so have current women, such as Victoria Camps or Amelia Valcárcel. There are many women who have left a mark; They have taught me and continue to teach me.
Q: What do you think of that phrase that we have always heard that “behind a great man there is a great woman”?
A: That phrase has always seemed a bit macho to me, like running our hand over our backs. Not behind or anything; we have been side by side for centuries, the story cannot be told if it is not a common story, of men and women. I am not talking about men who were neither behind nor in front, but who were living at the same time as these women with whom I have met.
Q: ‘A Shared Story’ seems like a much more personal book.
A: Surely yes. It is a book that would not exist if it were not for the pandemic. For many months we had to see how life had come to a standstill. I felt that need and that impulse to leave and I did it by writing, making this trip so personal. So there is more to me than I would have liked to tell.
That women reach textbooks: pending issue
Q: You defend that up to now women have hardly been the subject of the stories of history. Do you perceive that this situation is changing?
A: Little by little, the legacy of different women in different fields is beginning to be recognized. But there is still a long way to go. It remains for these remarkable women to go to textbooks, where men appear mostly.
It is the great pending subject that the Ministers of Education have. It does not matter what color they are, because we have had them of all colors, but they have all failed that subject of incorporating outstanding women into textbooks: great poetesses, politicians, philosophers, astronomers, mathematics… We must incorporate all those women who have left a mark and whose legacy is unknown because they are not in the textbooks.
Q: And do you feel that progress is being made?
A: Progress has been made, but not enough. Women still have glass ceilings. You go to a newsroom and there are mostly women, but in the director’s office… There are very few women who run the media, there are very few women who preside over banking entities, there are very few women who are heads of departments in large hospitals… For Therefore, we still have a ceiling to break: get to the control room, but where we have all the controls.
