Castilian writer Natalia Cerezo wrote a story in a new book titled I love you like salt, from the Vienna Editorial, curated by the recently deceased Carme Junint. It is a collection of short stories, written by 19 writers, that share the daughters' relationship with their father as their centerpiece. “It was Junyent’s initiative, because in the 1980s she had read a book by English writers that dealt with the same thing – the relationship of daughters with their father – and she was fascinated.”“, explains Cerezo. It is a book published in 1983 by Virago Publishing in London.
Junyent wanted to replicate the experience of transferring to paper this reflection on daughters' relationships with fathers (men), realizing that little had been written about it. “She wanted to take two authors from here and do the same thing as in the English version.”Cerezo says.
The linguist called back the writers in November 2022. “We were about thirty people, but then the dismantling and merging happened as well.”until 19 years until they finished writing there. “He suggested a text, fiction or non-fiction, but it deals with daughters’ loyalty to their parents.”. Shortly after, Junyint fell ill, “He handed the certificate to Simona Skrabek, who continued the mission.”.
Junyent chose several writers she admired who also had a special personal relationship with their father, either because they lost him at a young age, or because they got along with him, or because their relationship with him was complicated, “And others like me, who lost our mother when we were young.”. Therefore, the linguist knew the personal history of these selected authors, “Which surprised me, because we had never seen each other before.”.
In the volume, Natalia Cerezo wrote a story called “Absences,” which is fiction. “I spoke to my father to let him know my intentions, and he said go ahead, even though I warned him that would probably leave him as the villain in the film.” [riu]”. Cerezo selected personal items from the father and incorporated them into the story. “For example, my father, a mechanic, always wanted to be a mathematician, and the father in the story is one of them.”. It is common for Cerezo to document long before he introduces elements into his stories, and in this sense, “I talked to a friend whose father is a mathematician, so he could give me hints.”. Cerezo evokes absence in his story. “What happens when your mother dies and your father abandons you? Are we able to forgive? Can we become our own father? That is the thread.”says Cerezo, who also admits that her father never abandoned her in real life.
The book includes very different stories, written in prose, that take us to the extreme, or not so much, and also the tale “T'estimo com la sal”, a traditional tale that tells the story of a king's daughter. : “His father asks him how do you love me? She says she loves him like salt, but his father thinks he doesn’t love her.”. This tale exists in different cultures and always has the same structure. “It's good for dealing with the archetypes of the father and daughter characters which are then explored in more depth in the rest of the stories.”.
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