Author Charún-Illescas talks about her novels

By Emily Dulcan
Adelante Staff

Lucía Charún-Illescas visited MU for the Afro-Hispanic conference on April 15 and 16. Her first novel, Malambo, which was published in Spanish in 2001, was released in English last year.

In this work of historical fiction, Charún-Illescas weaves the history of Malambo, a Peruvian town, around the life of Tomasón, a painter and escaped slave who, though free of the whip and labor of Peruvian plantations, is artistically bound by the wealthy who commission his work. Central to the narrative is Tomasón's role as a griot (pronounced GREE-oh), the member of West African tribes responsible for memorizing the community’s history. Griots are storytellers, musicians and advisors.

Charún-Illescas left her native Peru 20 years ago and currently lives in Germany where she works as a journalist and translator. After the conference ended, Adelante! had the opportunity to talk with Charún-Illescas.

Q: During your presentation you described yourself as an “hembrista” as opposed to a “feminist.” What does “hembrista” mean?
A: I wanted to differentiate between the feminist movement, which is a movement primarily of white women, and those are mostly middle-class white women. Minority women have always had to work just as hard as many men. I use the term “hembrista” as a contrast to “machismo.” (In Spanish, hembra means female and macho means male.)

Q: You also mentioned your work on a new novel. What is it about?
A: This novel, which I'm almost finished with, is also a novel that has to do with the slave experience. In this novel the main characters are basically all women, who flee from a ship and transmit their stories orally. Oral transmission happens a lot from woman to woman. This novel is about how not to betray oral history by writing it down.

Q: In Malambo, keeping with the tradition of oral history, the griot is a very important concept, embodied by Tomasón. Do we still have griots today?
A: Yes, we still have griots. For example, in January I was in Lima, and I talked with one of the few ancient Afro-Peruvian men there. They still tell stories that are unknown elsewhere, stories that are not written down because they do not belong to the same social history as other stories do. And for the griots, many times they don't realize what they're doing, that they serve as vessels for an entire culture.

Q: Do you see yourself as a griot?
A: Griots are people who, apart from being transmitters of information, are very close to the gods. I don't think I'm on that path. I would like to be an initiate, and maybe in some number of years I will be, but not yet.

Q: Can you explain why you had to leave Peru?
A: They were purely personal reasons, I didn't have any political motivations...I can always go back to Peru. Basically, they were economic reasons. The economy in Peru did not make it possible for me to write.