María Luisa Puga

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María Luisa Puga (born February 3, 1944 in Mexico City , † December 25, 2004 there ) was a Mexican writer .

Life

María Luisa Puga was born in Mexico City, but spent most of her childhood in Acapulco , which at that time was still rather quiet and not affected by tourism . A decisive childhood experience was the early death of her mother when she was only nine years old, which is why she was raised by her grandmother. She graduated from a commercial college in Mazatlán , Sinaloa State, and then worked as an accountant.

From 1965 to 1968 she attended a course on English-language literature at the Instituto Anglomexicano in Mexico City. She later worked for Mexican and European publishers as well as for the United Nations . In 1968 she wanted to go to Europe for a year , but that turned into a total of almost ten years abroad: After stays in London (1968–1971), Rome , Greece , Paris and Madrid , she went to Nairobi , Kenya , for almost two years worked as foreign language secretary for UNEP . After another stay in Oxford , she returned to her home country in 1978.

In 1985 she left the hectic atmosphere in the capital and retired to the countryside, to Zirahuén , a small village in the state of Michoacán , from where she held literary workshops in nearby Pátzcuaro and Morelia . In 1995 she was kidnapped from her poor home, a traumatic experience that she alludes to in her book Nueve madrugadas y media . Due to the effects of very severe polyarthritis , she had to use a wheelchair in the last years of her life . María Luisa Puga died completely unexpected of serious cancer in December 2004, barely sixty years old.

As a journalist, she has worked in the following newspapers and magazines: Revista de la Universidad de México, Revista de Bellas Artes, Nexos, La Plaza, La Jornada, Unomásuno and El Universal .

Prizes and awards

  • Premio Nacional de Novela 1983 for Las posibilidades del odio
  • Premio "Xavier Villaurrutia" 1984 for Pánico o peligro
  • Premio Juan Ruiz de Alarcón 1996 for their complete works

plant

María Luisa Puga became famous with her first novel Las posibilidades del odio (The Possibilities of Hate), which offers a thoroughly innovative approach to aspects of intercultural relations between two countries in the south, Mexico and Kenya. Different perspectives of different figures (Africans, whites, men, women etc.) are presented in fragmentary form. In Cuando el aire es azul (When the air is blue), a utopian novel , María Luisa Puga ventures into a science fiction scenario of a world that lives in a closed atmosphere with blue air and a 28-hour daily rhythm. For the novel Pánico o peligro (Panic or Danger) she received the Xavier Villaurrutia literary prize, which is very renowned in Mexico . It is consistently written in the 2nd person and is aimed at an anonymous male you, which becomes less important as the protagonist is freed from male authority figures (father, boss, etc.). The metropolitan atmosphere in Mexico City as well as the historical background of the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968 and the effort to give the "colonized middle class" a voice in Mexico also play a not inconsiderable role. La forma del silencio (The Form of Silence), in which some autobiographical moments can be recognized (a childhood between Acapulco and the capital of Mexico, the early loss of the mother) could be classified in the series of childhood and development novels ; Here, too, there is a male contact person in the figure of Juan, with whom questions of writing are discussed on a metaliterary level and the crisis in Mexican society in the 1980s. Antonia is set in England and deals in first-person form with the fate of two childhood friends, one of whom, the title character, dies of breast cancer at an early age. A female orphan is also the main character in inventory ciudades (inventing cities), in which the new theme of old age and death is added. The narrative perspective slides between three main characters, Licha, Carlos and Lorenza, and three senses: look, touch and hearing, back and forth. The choice of perspective in Las razones del lago (information / objections by the lake), where there are two dogs, "Relato" and "Novela", that is "story" and "Roman", that characterize life in the small town by the lake ( behind which Pátzcuaro can easily be seen) look "from below", so to speak. Two dogs, Poeta (the poet) and Barna, had also appeared in pairs in Cuando el aire es azul . Nueve madrugadas y media (Nine and a half dawns) is written almost entirely in dialogue form , in which an older writer and a young colleague discuss various topics of the postmodern world.

María Luisa Puga's last work, Diario del dolor (Diary of Pain) is particularly touching , in which she processes autobiographical elements of her most recently very painful illness and writes in 100 short, diary-like sections about life in a wheelchair and dealing with pain. The latter almost attains the qualities of a figure made of flesh and blood, which is addressed directly in the 2nd person. The book also includes a CD with Puga's voice, which was used in the pain clinics of the Secretaría de Salud as part of the therapy concept.

The "real" diaries of María Luisa Puga, of which she has left hundreds and which are in the custody of the famous Mexican author Elena Poniatowska , are still awaiting publication. She also left two unfinished novels. Her last wish was that her ashes should be buried at the foot of the "Esteban" tree in front of her hut in Zirahuén.

The "Esteban" tree in front of the small house of the Mexican writer María Luisa Puga (1944–2004) in Zirahuén, Mexico

Novels

  • Las posibilidades del odio . México: Siglo XXI, 1978; 2nd edition 1981. New edition. Aldus-Conaculta, 2003.
  • Cuando el aire es azul . México: Siglo XXI, 1980.
  • Pánico o peligro . México, Siglo XXI, 1983. 2nd edition: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002.
  • La forma del silencio . México: Siglo XXI, 1987.
  • Antonia . México: Grijalbo, 1989. 2nd edition Ariadne: 1999. New edition. Punto de Lectura, 2004.
  • Las razones del lago . México / Barcelona / Buenos Aires: Grijalbo, 1991.
  • La viuda . México: Grijalbo, 1994.
  • La reina . México: Planeta Mexicana, 1995. (= Biblioteca Breve)
  • Inventory ciudades . México: Alfaguara, 1998.
  • Nueve madrugadas y media . México: Alfaguara, 2003.

stories

  • Inmóvil sol secreto . México: La Máquina de Escribir, 1979.
  • Accidents . México: Martín Casillas, 1981.
  • Intentos . México: Grijalbo, 1987.
  • De intentos y accidentes . México: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales para los Trabajadores del Estado, 2001.

Essays, Chronicles and Interviews

  • La cerámica de Hugo X. Velázquez: cuando bark el horno . México: Martín Casillas, 1983.
  • Itinerario de palabras , together with Mónica Mansour . México: Folios Ediciones, 1987.
  • De cuerpo entero (autobiography). México: UNAM / ECO, 1990.
  • Rupture y diversidad . México: Coordinación de Difusión Cultural, Dirección de Literatura, UNAM, 1990.
  • Lo que le pasa al lector . México: Grijalbo, 1991 (= Narrativa Grijalbo).
  • Crónicas de una oriunda del kilómetro X en Michoacán . México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1995 (= Cuaderno de viaje).
  • Diario del dolor . México: Alfaguara / Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana / Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2004.

Children's literature

  • El tornado . Drawings by Rosario Valderrama. México: CIDCLI - LIMUSA, 1985 (= La Hormiga de Oro).
  • Los tenis acatarrados . México: ECO, 1991.
  • La ceremonia de iniciación . México: FCE, 1994 (= Travesías).
  • A Lucas todo le sale mal . México: FCE, 2005 (= A la orilla del viento).

literature

  • Ballmaier, Priska M .: About the possibility, to put it another way: Versions of female lifestyles in the work of Mexican women authors . Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2001. (Feminat series; 10) ISBN 3-8300-0371-4
  • Bradu, Fabienne: Señas particulares: Escritoras (Ensayos sobre escritoras mexicanas del siglo XX). México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987, 118-135. ISBN 968-16-2689-3
  • De Beer, Gabriella. Contemporary Mexican Women Writers: Five Voices . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, 11-57. ISBN 0-292-71586-2
  • López, Irma M .: Historia, escritura e identidad: la novelística de Maria Luisa Puga . New York / Vienna [etc.]: Lang, 1996. (Wor (l) ds of change; 23) ISBN 0-8204-3052-8
  • Pfeiffer, Erna: EntreVistas. Diez escritoras mexicanas desde bastidores . Frankfurt a. M .: Vervuert Verlag, 1992, 123-135. ISBN 3-89354-051-2

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Puga, María Luisa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Mexico city
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 2004
Place of death Mexico city