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Taking care of the base to make the way
  • The weekend has been held in Azkoitia the book fair of women writers from : Writers Jasone Osoro and Alaine Agirre have talked about children's and youth literature, following the threads proposed by Xabier Mendiguren.
Gorka Peñagarikano Goikoetxea 2023ko martxoaren 27a
Geure Gelatik emakumeen liburu azoka ospatu da asteburuan Azkoitian. Mahai-inguruan, ezkerretik eskuinera, Xabier Mendiguren moderatzailea; eta Jasone Osoro eta Alaine Agirre idazleak. (Argazkia: ARGIA)

Reading a literary work can often be difficult and complex for the reader, for example, by the use of an enriching vocabulary by the writer, or by the strange and complex style or form of writing, to the extent that the text and the idea itself are incomprehensible or difficult to understand – it would not be wrong for media journalists to reflect on it. In short, it is also possible to reduce the hobby of reading, to turn literature into “an exclusive hobby of intellectuals”, and to resume the denial of it, stop reading, by the way. It would be good for everyone to go to simplicity, but that also generates some reticence, we should also look at why writing "simple" generates suspicion and why we've always wanted to write a little hard.

The writer who uses complex vocabulary and talks about abstract things is usually a man and an adult, which is the most widespread image. Or prestigious, perhaps better said. And on the other hand, it is thought that writing stories is "easier," meaning that children, adolescents and young people have to write "simple," "easy," and that is also "easy." In essence, the question is Does the prestigious children's and youth literature enjoy throughout the world of literature?

“Just as childhood is discredited, so is care, also with the children and youth literature,” Alaine Agirre stresses. In this sense, Jasone Osoro: “Nothing about juvenile literature appears in the media and it is forgotten that to reach adult literature, first we have to go through juvenile and juvenile literature”.

Space for frivolous questions

Osoro has talked a lot about frivolity: “We should not be intellectuals, let’s ask frivolous questions.”

The Elgoibartarra writer speaks of books written by himself, even in adult reading clubs, but in one of them he has not collected the result. Young people need, for Osoro, the writers to feel close: “They want to know if we have a partner, we have children... and we have to tell them, why not, what we feel in the first time we got the rule down and so on.” The passion for reading is linked to proximity, and “young people are very demanding readers”.

Aguirre, since he works in a school, has thought on more than one occasion in his adolescence: “Young people, as I have been told, are reflected in these books, because the problems that arise are common, because they understand them… I, when I started writing, usually think what I read when I was his age and what I missed”. For example, looking back, Agirre believes that in the previous books there was no work on homosexuality, and that the differentiation of gender roles was very evident, that the boys described themselves in one way and the girls of another… That is why he wanted to give “his touch”, placed on the skin of today’s young people. “You can work a lot with fiction,” she stresses.

Woman to the plaza

A book fair of writers and writers is held from : they were asked about the status of writers in relation to men.

Aguirre was the first to speak. “Think that the simple question answers: we are separating, we have not become neutral,” and he set as an example that in many catalogues they are labeled as “books for women”, such as works, black novels, poetry or essays, “they do not have to read only women to write with the rule.” He gave the floor quickly to Osoa, because he has more experience in the sector and Osoro is also a reference of Agirre.

Osoro published his first book in 1998, in which he recalls that the female references until then were scarce, since along with Xabier Mendiguren the names of Arantxa Iturbe and Arantxa Urretabizkaia were listed and cited, but few more, because they barely existed. When she went out to the public square with the first book under her arm, as a young woman, remember that in that market it was “something exotic”, “it was exotic, like a summer song”. “Woman and youth” was the owner of a media, up to that level. Osoro: “The situation has changed, or is changing, we are increasingly writers, very good... but I have felt very lonely for a long time.”