El Ciudadano
Original article: Escritora peruana Claudia Salazar Jiménez publica libro sobre la experiencia migratoria
«A constant, migratory life that finds gesture in the ongoing movement.» This encapsulates the essence of the latest publication by Ediciones Libros del Cardo, Migrar y otras artes. Escritos fuera de lugar, authored by Peruvian writer, academic, and cultural manager Claudia Salazar Jiménez, who is a recipient of the prestigious Las Américas Award.
The book compiles over two decades of migration experiences, beginning when Salazar, then a doctoral student, relocated to New York for her studies.
Salazar records the shifts from life in Lima, encompassing friendships, cuisine, street life, and routines, creating a vivid diary of sensations, practical notes, and numerous «welcome to New York» moments—insights only a lived experience, rather than that of a tourist, can provide.
«New voices accelerate and overlap; our perspective is enriched by what we already know about the new country and city. Migratory writing feeds off this novelty while simultaneously grappling with it,» the text states.
Reflecting on the transformation of these writings—annotations also shared on social media—into a book, the author elucidates, «The migratory life inevitably impacts one’s writing; movement injects fluidity and challenges certainties, genres, and borders.»
In a related observation, Argentine writer, playwright, and poet Fernanda García Lao notes in the book’s back cover that «identity blurs, it is called into question. The essence of where I am from loses strength. The answer is elusive. One becomes what they observe, what happens to them. As the landscape, language, and family change, the self expands. How many Claudias are in this book? As many as there are experiences.»
«Where do I come from? I would prefer a river, a flower, a bird instead of a collection of buildings,» Claudia Salazar reflects in her book, contemplating the dislocation of origin and the awareness of being a migrant. «My identity—what is that?—feels pained,» she adds.
In this journey, she shares a unique sentiment: «I have come to envision that my home is myself.»
Event Details
Migrar y otras artes. Escritos fuera de Lugar by Claudia Salazar Jiménez will be presented on Tuesday, May 12 at 6:30 PM at the Librería del GAM, located at Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral Local 2, Building B (Alameda Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins 227, Metro Universidad Católica).
The presentation will feature fellow authors Gabriela Contreras and Jessica Sequeira, both of whom have lived the continuous act of migration. More information is available at edicioneslibrosdelcardo.cl.
Claudia Salazar Jiménez (Lima, Peru, 1976) is a writer, university professor, and cultural manager. She studied Literature at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and holds a PhD in Latin American Literature from New York University.
She has published La sangre de la aurora (Ediciones Libros del Cardo, 2019; Animal de invierno, 2013), one of the first novels in Peru to critique violence against Quechua women and their forms of resistance, winning the prestigious Las Américas Award 2014 for best novel written in Spanish.
She has also released the short story collection Coordenadas temporales and the historical-juvenile novel 1814. Year of Independence.
Currently, she is a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she teaches Latin American literature and creative writing. She received the Sylvia Molloy Award from LASA for her academic work. Portions of her writings have been translated into English, French, Italian, German, Norwegian, Polish, Arabic, and Portuguese. She resides in New York.
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