Hay Festival Querétaro 2023 – Gender

Nimmi Gowrinathan (Sri Lanka/United States) is a thinker, academic and activist, and author of Radicalizing Her. Why Women Choose Violence, a fascinating study of women active in guerrilla movements, including the FARC (Colombia), the Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), the Syrians who have fought against the Asad government, the EZLN in Mexico and the PLO in Palestine. The book dismantles beliefs about gender and analyses the many reasons that lead these women to armed struggle. Gowrinathwan is a professor at City College in New York, where she has founded the Politics of Sexual Violence initiative, and works regularly with media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera and the BBC. In conversation with Carla Alicia Suárez Félix.

Event in English

Frida Cartas (Mexico), from Mazatlán, describes herself as a housewife and part-time writer. A former presenter at the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio with the programme Altersexual (a sexual anthropology programme) on Radio Ciudadana, she contributes to digital media outlets and gives workshops on sexual and reproductive rights for young people, with a class and gender perspective. She is also the author of the extraordinary novel Transporte a la infancia, which, using honest, colloquial language, recalls the scenes from her childhood in which she discovered and affirmed her identity, creating an essential testimony for the recognition of trans childhoods, bringing to light the urgency of guaranteeing respect, protection and freedom for trans children. In conversation with Imanol Martínez.

Nimmi Gowrinathan (Sri Lanka/United States) is a thinker, academic and activist, and author of Radicalizing Her. Why Women Choose Violence, a fascinating study of women active in guerrilla movements, including the FARC (Colombia), the Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), the Syrians who have fought against the Asad government, the EZLN in Mexico and the PLO in Palestine. The book dismantles beliefs about gender and analyses the many reasons that lead these women to armed struggle. Gowrinathwan is a professor at City College in New York, where she has founded the Politics of Sexual Violence initiative, and works regularly with media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera and the BBC. In conversation with the BBC Mundo journalist, Valentina Oropeza.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Angela Saini is a British scientific journalist and radio presenter, as well as a writer whose work has been acclaimed and translated into 14 languages. Her penultimate book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named Book of the Year by Nature, the Financial Times and the NPR programme Science Friday. On this occasion she presents The Patriarchs, an audacious, radical book that unearths the roots and history of how this system of domination arose for the first time in societies and spread around the world, from the prehistory to the present. Saini offers a hopeful narrative bringing to bear the many possible human agreements that question the old stories of inevitable male supremacy, and reveals that it is an element that is constantly changing within systems of control. In conversation with Javier García del Moral.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Coinciding with the publication in Mexico of Sisters of the Yam, by the great African-American thinker bell hooks, we bring together three writers, all admirers of hooks, to talk about her work and the influence of her legacy. With Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe), international trade lawyer, and award-winning author of novels and short stories; her novel Out of Darkness, Shining Light tells the story of the Africans who travelled and worked with the legendary Doctor Livingstone, revealing the hypocrisy and deception of the colonial project. Jumko Ogata (Mexico) is a writer and anti-racist activist from Veracruz; she contributed to the anthology Tsunami II and is the author of the children’s book Mi pelo chino; she has also translated this edition of hooks’ work. They will talk to the writer Gabriela Jauregui.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Two authors who have published new novels will talk to Gina Jaramillo. With Montse Bizarro (Spain), a graduate in Journalism and Humanities from the Pompeu Fabra University, who has worked for media outlets such as El Punt Avui and Europa Press, as well as in corporate communication. Her debut novel Mañana ya no hablaremos de nada talks about abusive and toxic relationships, with neurodivergent characters, showing how they challenge the imposed norms and seek to define their space in the world. Frida Cartas (Mexico), is from Mazatlán and describes herself as a housewife and part-time writer. A former presenter at the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio with the programme Altersexual (a sexual anthropology programme) on Radio Ciudadan, she gives workshops on sexual and reproductive rights for young people, with a class and gender perspective, and also works in the digital media. She is the author of the extraordinary novel Transporte a la infancia, which, using honest, colloquial language, recalls the scenes from her childhood in which she discovered and affirmed her identity, creating an essential testimony for the recognition of trans childhoods, bringing to light the urgency of guaranteeing respect, protection and freedom for trans children.

The guest at this event is a pioneer with great achievements. She was the first Peruvian woman to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), and to climb the six highest peaks on the other continents She is also the first openly LGTBI+ person to reach the seven summits. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado tells her story in the book In the Shadow of the Mountain, winner of the Stanford Travel Book of the Year. In it, the author tells of these milestones, as well as a past of trauma and excess, of alcoholism and promiscuous sex, and before this, childhood abuse. Vásquez-Lavado reveals how an ayahuasca ceremony helped her to connect to the mountains. It is part of her story that she undertakes her expeditions together with other victims of sexual abuse, as part of the Courageous Girls project, founded in 2014. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado will talk to Yuriria Sierra about her activism, her memories and about the film that is currently being made.