and a body to remember with effectively combines elements of our Pulp past and Arsenal Pulp present. This is a collection of stories about rebellion and activism, while at the same time stories about the immigrant experience and emotional turmoil.
Carmen Rodríguez explores place and language in this illuminating short-story collection based on her life as a political exile in Canada.
The stories also form an intriguing document of self-translation: Carmen has lived in Chile and Canada, speaks Spanish and English, has written these stories in Spanish and English, and because of this has created a system of internal translation. Some of these pieces were first written in Spanish, others in English. Carmen found herself translating the stories back and forth, discovering new words and finding new ways of communicating her thoughts and feelings into another language, until Carmen "felt that both tips of my tongue and my two sets of ears were satisfied with the final product."
and a body to remember with includes: a story about fleeing the enemy through the night-time jungle; a story about a woman, in a new place, who is tormented by her past when a shadowy figure begins following her around her new city; stories about suddenly leaving family and friends behind when a woman is forced to escape, narrowly, with her life; stories about the struggle to establish one's self, one's family, in a new country, a new culture, a new language; emotional stories of memory, love, longing, danger, dissent; political stories of activism, rebellion, retribution.
And through it all resonates the voice of a woman determined to make the world into a reasonable, just, and safe place, whether in war-torn Chile, or foreign-like Canada.
Evoking a Borges, dream-like quality, these are stories about women in transition, whose lives are conflicted by history, both personal and political. As a storyteller, Carmen maps the emotional terrain of dual geographies--caught between two worlds, her protagonists look for redemption in the simple truths of love and honour, whether amid the political turmoil of Chile, or the torment of estrangment in Canada.
and a body to remember with was simultaneously published in Spanish as De Cuerpo Entero by Editorial Los Andes in Santiago, Chile.