Event 17
Gioconda Belli in conversation with Melba Escobar
Literature and resistance
Museo de Arte Religioso
The acclaimed Nicaraguan poet and novelist Gioconda Belli is also known for her commitment to her country’s political and social struggle. Her works explore matters such as feminism, love and revolution, combining a poetic sensibility with the denunciation of injustice. Belli participated actively in the Sandinista movement, something that has formed an important influence on her work, given that in it women held a central place as agents of change and resistance. Over the course of her career she has won numerous awards, including the 1978 Casa de las Américas Prize and the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2008. Her most famous works are The Inhabited Woman (1994) and El país de las mujeres (2010), which are about the search for identity and the struggle for freedom in contexts of oppression. Her latest book is Un silencio lleno de murmullos, a story about absence, silence and family links; after the death of Valeria in Spain, her daughter travels from Nicaragua to look after the things that she has left behind. Surrounded by these objects, Penélope symbolically meets her mother again, and starts to reflect on what was left unsaid between them. In conversation with Melba Escobar.
-
