Literary Café with Ángela Hernández

Literary Café with Ángela Hernández
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 03/18/2014

The “Literary Café” (Café Literario), a get-together at the Ágora Mall, joined the events that celebrate women throughout the month. This was a perfect opportunity for the attendees to spend time with our Guest of Honor: writer Ángela Hernández, known for her contributions to women’s contemporary narrative during the past three decades, who is also an essayist and poet, who spoke about her creative process.

The Literary Café was sponsored by DOLCE ITALIA, and took place in its warm atmosphere and exclusive Ristorante, Pizzeria, and Gelateria, El Jardín. The event was coordinated by renowned cultural manager, editor, art dealer, and entrepreneur Verónica Sención, and conducted by writer Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo and poet Mateo Morrison, cultural manager and National Literature Prize 2010.

Other hosts of the activity were Silvia Rosales, Administrator of the Ágora Mall; Kenia Bisonó, Director of Marketing; and, Ivonne González, Events Coordinator.

Veronica Sención offered the welcoming remarks to the award-winning writer, and praised the qualities of Ángela Hernández, her contributions to Dominican literature as a poet, and storyteller, essayist, photographer, painter, and a person that is very much appreciated by all her friends for her human qualities, her simplicity and humility in her work. Winner of several prestigious awards in her country, she is a poet who is constantly moving around, visiting schools, colleges, and cultural centers to bring them poetry and the love of books.

In the 25 years I have known her, I have seen her move hand in hand with the most distinguished intellectuals of the country, such as Juan Bosch, Pedro Mir, Manuel del Cabral, and Víctor Villegas, just to mention a few. Her body of work is read with enthusiasm by young students who see in her a reflection of everyday life, of the contemporary, and the sublime. We are always waiting for the new things that this great lady of the Dominican literature will bring and we are honored to have her today as our guest at the Literary Café at the Ágora Mall.

Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo, while introducing the presentation of the guest writer said: “Ángela Hernández (Jarabacoa, 1954) is, among the writers of the generation of the 80s, the most complicit in friendship, narrator of the Caribbean female imaginary, demystifying stereotypes and prejudices that make a thinking woman a rare woman. Her voice is the voice of many others; her voice is a confluence of ancient voices breaking the hierarchies of the order imposed by stereotypes and authoritarianism. Her voice subverts and brings no other pretext than complicity to re-build the I-our (yo-nuestro) imprisoned by the conflicts of gender identities.

“Ángela’s manuscripts, by themselves, are assumed passengers at sea in her dreams when they go behind her to talk, and to give an argument to her wandering. I understand that there are no formulas to write; however, they say there are some when the option of writing, full of ideological purpose, is shot like an arrow to the heart of a tiger.

“Ángela knows that you cannot write as “dolls” from marginality, because accepting that is to assume ourselves as broken women. I know that writing, for Ángela Hernández, is to unleash the beginning of a flight, noticing that the line that we see on the horizon is the innocence. Therefore, I ask you to tell us: if writing infringing oblivion is not being blind to the anguish that brings loneliness, getting naked, singing, bribing time, and making the present urgent. Let’s now hear the confessions and secrets of our author, the greatest allied friend in friendship, as I said earlier: Ángela Hernández Núñez”.