Album de Fotos

 

SELF-PORTRAIT AT SIXTY-FIVE YEARS OLD

I was born in Barcelona in 1958, and for as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. I even have a photo of myself at six or seven years old, writing (I still remember what: something titled "The Sun"). Over time, I noticed a detail in that photo that I hadn't initially paid attention to: the nurse's costume. Who would have given it to me, and why, if I never showed the slightest interest in medical professions...? The reason seems clear to me now: as a woman, a caregiving role was expected of me. But I played dumb. My maternal family was "charnega" (originating from Ávila, Spanish-speaking, and poor), while my paternal family was Catalan and bourgeois. A great-grandfather of mine had a cosmetics factory; his son had a tailoring workshop, which my father inherited and turned into a large factory until it went bankrupt, like almost all of Catalonia's textile industry, in the 1980s.
 

I learned to speak Spanish, my mother's language, and only later did Catalan come, which I spoke with my father and still speak with my brother. In school, the Lycée Français, I learned Spanish as a cultured language (that's why, and because it's my mother tongue, I chose it as my literary language) and then French; I've never studied Catalan.
 

After my first book, a collection of short stories, issued in 1988, I published several novels, as well as short stories and non-fiction books (see below). But for the past few years, what interests me most is autobiography. In 2007, I published one about my family and my first twenty years, titled Adolescence in Barcelona around 1970. As I've almost always kept a diary, in 2013, it occurred to me to bring to light the one from two decades earlier, the time when I arrived in Madrid, had my daughter, began to make my way, or try to, in the literary world... It was published under the title A Subterranean Life: Diary 1991-1994, followed by Everybody Wears a Mask: Diary 1995-1996, Knowing Who I Am: Diary 1997-1999, and Something's Missing in All of Us: Diary 2000-2002. In 2019, what I believe to be my best book to date was released: It Wasn't Supposed to Happen to Me, about the central period of my life: marriage, motherhood... trying to answer the question of how and why I ended up being what I had never wanted to be: a woman, in the most conventional and bourgeois sense of the word.
 

When I started writing and later publishing (in the late 1980s), it never occurred to me to think that being a woman influenced my writing or my career in any way. Blessed naiveté... I soon discovered that a female writer's work is perceived as "women's literature," while a male writer's work is seen as just "literature." I began to reflect on this, and I continue to do so: it's an inexhaustible, fascinating topic that has led me to write essays (Literature and Women, Women's Fiction and its Readers, The Silence of Mothers, and the latest, What Do We Do with Lolita?), compile anthologies (one of them, Mothers and Daughters, published in 1996, was a bestseller), and co-found, along with other colleagues, the association Clásicas y Modernas for gender equality in culture (of which I was the first president, from 2009 to 2017). Over the years, I've come to feel not only frustration and anger about discrimination but also joy and encouragement when I see that, as women, we have experiences and points of view that are not represented, or hardly represented, in culture, and that we can explore, enriching the literary corpus. As Madame de Sévigné, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, Anaïs Nin, Rosa Chacel, Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath, Lucia Berlin... and many other writers did, whom I read, reread, admire, and study.
 

My relationship with the cultural world around me, and its relationship with me, is, I'm afraid, one of love-hate. I read, visit exhibitions, go to the opera, the cinema, the theater, and all of that interests me and I enjoy it... but I can't help but notice and point out the almost omnipresent sexism. And that cultural world, in turn, invites me to participate in it, but it also gets irritated with me and distrusts me (an interviewer once said something to me that left me very surprised: "You're a sniper. They're afraid of you").

 
Apart from writing my books (which, obviously, I don't live off of; neither I nor almost anyone else), I have a column in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia since 2001, I occasionally write for other media outlets, such as El País, I've taught courses and workshops, I've organized series of lectures like the one I co-directed at Caixaforum in Madrid with Pilar Vicente de Foronda, Neither Muses Nor Geniuses, from 2014 to 2019, which was a great success, and I regularly give lectures about subjects related, in one way or another, with women and literature. The one I delivered in 2013 at the March Foundation in Madrid about Virginia Woolf has, to this day, 152,000 views; I've given many others about writers (Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, Clarice Lispector...) and I've also talked about the myth of the genius (Pablo Neruda and the Nameless Woman, at Caixaforum) and other cultural mechanisms that exclude women (Women and the Canon, at the Spanish National Library).
 

Until now, I had never included anything about my personal or family situation in my biographical summaries. That silence was partly due to a desire to preserve my privacy and partly to a fear that a phrase like "she is married and mother of two" could be interpreted as a desire for respectability, especially considering my well-known feminist stance. However, now I see reasons to bring the personal to light.
 

On the one hand, I don't want to contribute to the fiction of the creator who creates alone, disconnected from any environment (a fiction that actually serves to invisibilize class and gender privileges). On the other hand, I consider giving birth to (or adopting) and raising children to be a form of creation as difficult and valuable as intellectual or artistic one. So here are some personal details. Being born into the bourgeois class has given me many advantages, such as an excellent education or financial assistance from my parents when I've needed it. Without that, I'm not sure I would have been able to devote as much time as I have to writing. Otherwise, I married in 1989 to a foreigner (French), an executive in the banking sector; I moved with him to Madrid because it was the city where both he and I found employment; we had a daughter in 1994 and adopted a son in 2000. But I wasn't satisfied. I felt like I was living an inauthentic life, according to values that weren't mine and didn't make me happy. I was becoming a housewife, which I had never intended to. In 2006, I divorced, breaking with both my husband and the  lifestyle that he represented.

 
In 2008, I received an email from a stranger commenting on an article of mine in La Vanguardia. I replied... he replied... I replied... and now we live together.
 

Today, at sixty-five years old, my only true project is to continue growing literarily. Otherwise, what I want is to continue living as I do, leading this life I've constructed to my measure and that makes me happy, surrounded by the people I love.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Laura Freixas (Barcelona, 1958) studied at the French Lyceum in her city. She graduated in Law in 1980, but she has always dedicated herself to writing. She became known in 1988 with a collection of stories, "The Killer in the Wrist." In 1997, her first novel, "Last Sunday in London," was published, followed by "Among Friends" (1998), "Love or Whatever" (2005), and "The Others Are Happier" (2011, reissued in 2018). She has also published another book of stories ("Stories at Forty," 2001) and an autobiography: "Adolescence in Barcelona towards 1970" (2007, reissued in 2021). In 2013, she began publishing her diaries: "An Underground Life. Diary 1991-1994," "Everyone Wears a Mask. Diary 1995-1996," "Knowing Who I Am. Diary 2000-2002" and "We All Lack Something. Diary 2000-2002" (2024).

Alongside her narrative work, Laura Freixas has developed an intense activity as a scholar and promoter of literature written by women. In 1996, she coordinated and wrote the prologue for an anthology of contemporary Spanish female authors' stories, "Mothers and Daughters" (which has had 16 editions), and in 2000, she published the influential essay "Literature and Women." She has continued writing about the subject her most recent book in this area being "What shall we do with Lolita? Arguments and battles around women in culture" (2022).

She has been an editor, literary critic, and translator. She founded in 1987 and directed until 1994 the literary series "El Espejo de Tinta" at Grijalbo Publishing House, where she first published authors like Amos Oz and Elfriede Jelinek in Spain. She has translated the diaries of Virginia Woolf and André Gide, as well as the letters of Madame de Sévigné and Elizabeth Smart's novel "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept."

Since 2001, she has been a columnist and literary critic for the newspaper "La Vanguardia," and she sporadically collaborates with other media outlets, such as "El País." She has been a teacher, lecturer, or guest writer at numerous Spanish and foreign universities (Stockholm, Budapest, City University of New York, Saint-Andrews...), especially in the United States (Virginia, Dartmouth College, Illinois, Syracuse...). Her lecture on Virginia Woolf (in 2013, at the March Foundation) has over 150,000 views, and she has given many others about writers (Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin, Clarice Lispector...), about the myth of genius (Pablo Neruda and the Nameless Woman, at Caixaforum), or examining the cultural mechanisms that exclude women (Women and the Canon, at the National Library). She was one of the founders and the first president (from 2009 to 2017) of the association "Clásicas y Modernas" for gender equality in culture (www.clasicasymodernas.org).

Increasingly interested in autobiography in all its forms (memoir, autobiography, diaries...), Laura Freixas published in 2019 what is her most widely read and acclaimed book, "It wasn't goint go happen to me", which she defines as an "autobiography written like a novel". In it,recalls and tries to understand how and why she had become, in her forties, the sort of person -a "homemaker"- that she had never ever intended to be.

After living in France as a student and in the United Kingdom as a Spanish lecturer at the Universities of Bradford and Southampton, she has lived in Madrid since 1991.

CRITIQUE

 
Saber quién soy (Knowing Who I Am), 2021

"The author's honesty in not showing herself elevated on a pedestal but in the arena of self-affirmation, showing ambitions and frustrations that others would keep silent, and the stark vision of the second tier of Spanish literary hierarchy are factors of special interest in her text."

Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, La Vanguardia, 5-6-21
 

A mí no me iba a pasar (It Wasn't Going to Happen to Me), 2019

"Laura Freixas writes with the courage to delve into her own biography to address issues such as macho inheritance, the tyranny of beauty, marriage, motherhood, and intellectual ambition. A great book."

Anna Caballé, El País, 24-6-19

*

"An excellent individual and generational testimony, lucid and revealing."

Cristina Peri Rossi, El Mundo, 18-7-19

*

"With elegance, irony, and a sharp critique, Laura Freixas portrays the chiaroscuro of the ambivalences that structure the relationship between genders in our societies, the tensions of domestic life with its rhythms and routines, family relationships, the distribution of roles and powers within the private sphere. A mature and courageous autobiography and an interesting social portrait of how women's subjectivity is constructed under liberal patriarchy."

Cristina Guirao, eldiario.es, 15-11-19
 

Todos llevan máscara (Everyone Wears a Mask), 2018

"A true intimate diary, brave and sincere, whose reading is suitable for those who appreciate good writing and understand that a diary is essentially the 'novel' of a life but becomes especially recommended for those who share with her the passion for those two sides of the same coin which are reading and writing."

Angélica Tanarro, El Norte de Castilla, 5-5-18

*

"The sincerity to talk about intimate matters, those that are usually kept secret, is what characterizes this diary. Here, conflicts in relationships, the dilemmas of a woman torn between social roles and the struggle for independence, or the problems derived from motherhood, what the author has called in her previous diary "the underground life," are addressed directly and precisely. It is an exercise that confirms the costly and slow path to becoming a free and autonomous woman and a genuinely coherent and responsible writer with her condition as a woman who renounces nothing."

Manuel Alberca, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 1-10-18

*

"What is fascinating and addictive about Freixas' diary is its sincerity and lack of modesty, which doesn't go — even though it goes — through revealing others' miseries, but by recognizing one's own. Freixas has captured in these diaries, fresh and pulsating, the literary reality of years like any other, years of nothing, of literature, of envies and ambitions, painfully similar to last year and the year to come. And that's why "Everyone Wears a Mask" is so well read because the merciless truth of things never loses its relevance."

Alberto Olmos, El Confidencial, 1-8-18


Una vida subterránea (An Underground Life), 2013

"A text that surprises with its authenticity and is read with fascination."

Rosa Montero, El País, 7-7-13

 
Los otros son más felices (Other People Are Happier), 2011

"Without fraudulence of any kind, with a frank and direct voice and blunt resourcefulness (…) the writer Laura Freixas returns to the world of fiction. (…) Interest in her continues to grow and grow (…) A true pleasure.” (Pilar Castro, El Cultural / El Mundo)

*

"An account that shares many traits with the Bildungsroman or coming of age tale (…). A novel that will help audiences discover (or remember) the magnitude of the profound social and familial metamorphosis of Spaniards from the times of the dictator to the present.” (J. M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC)

*

"In this work of searching, looking and choosing autonomously is the secret line that animates a mature and careful tale, in which discovering the other—this other that we typically assume is happier— in the end, is a discovery of oneself.” (Rodrigo Pinto, El País)

 
Adolescencia en Barcelona hacia 1970 (A Teenager in Barcelona around 1970) 2007
 

"[Freixas’s book has] an impeccable, pleasant and slightly ironic style, if not outright fun.” (Vicente Araguas, Revista de Libros) "The information regarding the last years of Francoism that the story includes about the education received in a bourgeois Catalan family and the portrayal of the customs of the time, make up an interesting frieze full of nuances. But the best thing about it is the subtle and gradual perspective it portrays (…) a lesser known text in the work of the author but great for its honesty, force and life.” (Pilar Castro, El Cultural / El Mundo)
*

"The book presents us with the experience of a woman who grew up in permanent divorce. And the book reflects lucidly about it. Perhaps because of the relevance of her profession, Freixas values the written word like she had never done before until now.” (Anna Caballé, ABC)

 

Amor o lo que sea (Love or Whatever It Is), 2005

"Laura Freixas's is one of the most important voices in recent Spanish fiction. (…) A voice which is tenacious, interesting, intelligent, true to her creative principles, demanding, with the purpose of uniting woman, life and literature. She has declared it in fiction, in essays, and she now declares it in Love or whatever it is." (Pilar Castro, El Cultural / El Mundo)
*

"One more piece in a long and polymeric trajectory -including essays, short stories, novels and translations- in which the author confronts and questions women’s sentimental education. … This is a polyphonic novel in which different voices and experiences are linked through an umbilical cord, at the same time as they are fragmented. Through quick strokes, a diachronic portrait of women in distress* is created… A novel with psychological dimensions - born with the key and tonality of a sentimental chronicle - about the desire for knowledge and the ability to choose the life that one desires." (Gemma Casamajó, Avui)

 
Cuentos a los cuarenta (Tales at the Age of Forty), 2001

 
"There are some very good stories in this collection. Freixas has a direct style, which combines quite naturally narration and dialogue. Her stories display an attractive simplicity which will certainly attract many readers.” (Germán Gullón , ABC)
 

Literatura y mujeres (Literature and women), 2000


"At long last, here is a book [for general readers that confronts a subject as reviled by some, as attractive for others, as is women and fiction. Questions such as: is there a literature that can be called feminine? Is it true that some critics see themselves as the bastion of literary values and therefore, impose their canon? Will the canon change when women enter the elite groups? Find an answer in this book. Laura Freixas confesses that she did not want to write it, but she has hit a raw nerve.” (Concha García, ABC)

*

"This book was necessary, much more so than we thought. Literature and women offers a lucid global vision of what is happening in our country around that thorny little question posed to every woman who sticks her nose into the literary world.” (María Ángeles Cabré, La Vanguardia)

*

"Laura Freixas ' book is enlightening, and the passion that comes to the surface in many pages does not detract from its clear-sightedness and truthfulness.” (Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural / El Mundo)


Entre amigas (Just Between Friends), 1998


"With confidence, clarity and economy, Freixas goes into the nuances of a story which is, to a large extent, the story of many of the Spaniards who are now between thirty-five and fifty. Freixas brings up many issues and leaves us, when all is said and done, with the suspicion that the losses of both the characters are probably the same loss, and that these two women who talk in Paris are debating, deep down, in the conscience of all of us.” (Juan Carlos Suñén, ABC)

 *

"Laura Freixas reconstructs the evolution of two lives of the leftist generation, unearths –with a gift for suspense- the inevitable secrets of the past, and with a tone which is light but never frivolous, puts forward some basic existential questions about love, friendship, marriage, children, etc. A good reading.” ( Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, La Vanguardia)

*

"The author uses a very direct style, with simple structures and vocabulary, for a detailed description of feelings, reminding us of the first works by Soledad Puértolas or Carmen Martín Gaite.” (Juan Marín, El País)


Último domingo en Londres (The Last Sunday in London), 1997


"The novel is a combination of texts that are irresistible because of the transparency and freshness of a style in which what is seen is not the prose but the poetry. Poetry of anxiety, of rage, of desolation." (Pilar Castro, ABC)

 *

"The Last Sunday in London is a novel written with an artistic prose and a deeply felt emotion that expresses at the same time a searing pessimism and an exulting jubilation. Apart from the different scenes and the various conflicts, the voice we hear is the unmistakable voice of Laura Freixas, nourished by a disquieting and fruitful solitude." ( Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia)
 

El asesino en la muñeca (The Wrist Murderer), 1988


"A new narrative voice is born, mature and accomplished. With debuts such as this one, now we can really start to believe in the boom of young Spanish fiction."  (Juanjo Fernández, Diari de Barcelona)

 *

"The ten short stories of The Wrist Murderer, first book of the Barcelona-born writer Laura Freixas , weave a delightful plot –a happy combination of freedom and rigor- that ends by becoming a monstrous spider's web." (Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia)