The director of the Economic Culture Fund (FCE), the writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, expressed his disagreement with including women’s books for “fees” in a dissemination collection, which caused a strong controversy on social networks in Mexico for a statement that was described as misogynistic.
“Because if we start from the quota, you say, well, a collection of poems written by a woman that is horribly disgusting and bad, just because it was written by a woman, does not deserve to be sent to a community room in the middle of Guanajuato. Why do we have to punish them with that book of poetry?” Taibo II said during President Claudia Sheinbaum’s daily conference.
After the comment, Sheinbaum intervened and announced that a version will be made with books written by women.
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“We are going to make a women’s collection,” said the president.
The official announced this Thursday the launch of the “25 for 25” campaign, in which 2.5 million books will be given away to promote reading in Latin America, whose authors are representatives of the Literary Boom of the 60s and 70s, mostly men.
After being questioned about the absence of more titles written by women, such as the Mexican writer Elena Garro, Taibo II made the aforementioned comment, although he clarified that in the collection “the number of authors is large”, among them Noa Fernández, Elena Poniatowska, Adela Fernández and Guadalupe Dueñas.
The collection includes, among other authors, Juan Gelman, Julio Cortázar, Manuel Rojas, Raúl Zurita and Gabriel García Márquez.
Taibo II said that Uruguay and Honduras and all FCE bookstores in Latin America will be added to the distribution, reaching 14 countries, while acknowledging that there were problems in Peru and Ecuador, countries with which Mexico does not have good relations.
With information from EFE.
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