There can’t be many people in Guadalajara who relish the annual arrival of the International Book Fair (FIL) like Noemi Mejia does. Since she arrived in Guadalajara from Veracruz several years ago, she has attended every day of the festival each year.
Mejia is not professionally involved with the FIL. Neither is she an academic. No, her devotion to the FIL, as well as her devotion to reading, comes straight from the heart. As she recently told the weekly readers group she leads, “We love books because of the ideas that they give us, ideas that remain in our hearts. It’s not that we are interested in discussing the details of Chekhov’s or any author’s career.”
In her readers group, Mejia focuses on authors from a variety of countries — “first Mexico, then Latin America, then Europe,” she said. But she naturally gravitates toward her home country, just as the FIL, although it is clearly an international event (the 2011 invited country is Germany), is primarily a festival of books in Spanish.
So when Mejia was asked to provide a list of her five favorite books, she was happy to mention all Mexican authors and their books that are available in English translation.
“I like Juan Rulfo the most. He’s from Guadalajara.” She showed his famed book of short stories, “Llano en llamas” (Burning Plain).
“He fills you. Some people don’t like him because he writes about country people. But his stories often make me cry.”
Next up was another Jalisco author, Fernando del Paso, and his novel “Noticias del Imperio” (News of the Empire) about the tragic lives of Maximiliano and Carlota, 18th-century Austrian and Belgian royalty who were sent to Mexico to try to form a monarchy here.“Del Paso is one of the best Latin American writers,” Mejia said. “He’s a very cultured person — he studied in France and the United States — and he’s only written two books. This one was 10 years in the making.”
Mejia thought that another of her top five was one that would be the most interesting to GR readers. “La Frontera de Cristal” (The Glass Frontier) is a book of short stories by Carlos Fuentes, who is also one of Mexico’s best known writers.
“Unlike Del Paso, Fuentes is prolific. In ‘Frontera de Cristal’ he talks of the union between U.S. and Mexican people, including the prejudices — on both sides,” she said with raised eyebrows. At the book club she leads, Mejia read one of the stories “Las Amigas” (The Friends), which takes place in Chicago and involves American and Mexican characters interacting.
Next, Mejia mentions two female authors. “Rosario Castellanos was of course quite famous as a novelist, poet and short story writer. (Indeed, one notices running throughout Mejia’s picks, a great many short stories, a genre apparently very much alive in Mexico, though it is moribund north of the border.) Mejia has chosen Castellanos’ novel “Recetas de Cocina,” (Kitchen Recipes) and compares it to “Como Agua Para Chocolate” (Like Water for Chocolate) which likewise was a novel and film that used food as a starting point for a spellbinding story of a family.
Christina Pacheco, the 70-year-old wife of author Jose Emilio Pacheco who wrote the beloved short story “Batallas en el Desierto” (Battles in the Desert), was last but not least.
“They’re paying homage to her this year at the FIL,” Mejia said, showing Pacheco’s collection of short stories and cronicas (a genre similar to a short story but lacking a real plot, Mejia explained) called “Para Vivir Aqui” (To Live Here).
Mejia didn’t want to leave out the well known Octavio Paz, nor the northern Mexican Daniel Sada, who just died, nor the “great but unknown” Agustin Monsreal, but a list of five is a list of five.
She added that she is starting another readers group (in Spanish) in the Bugambilias area and that anyone wishing to join should call her at (33) 3612-0580.