Breathe
By Consuelo Sáizar de la Fuente
A couple of years ago, Isabel Allende pointed out that "the 21st century has seen the appearance of the great cultural phenomenon of women's literature". Unquestionably true in the case of the Spanish language. Last century, neither of the two great literary movements in our language -the boom and the crack- had a woman writer among its members, although it should be noted that the one who contributed to fix the canon of the Latin American boom was the Argentine Luis Harss in his book Los nuestros, in which he did not include any woman writer; it is also true that in the case of the crack -although in its manifesto only names of writers appear-, Cristina Rivera-Garza has been recurrently linked to it as one of its members.
Monterrey is home to a group of women writers who share a world in which they
of letters and dreams, who have defied the prevailing custom -unwritten- until the last century that 'to publish in our country you had to live in Mexico City', who made the decision to write and publish from the place where they were born; and who, in addition, have proposed to take charge of telling the literary story -very little explored- of the northeastern region of the country.
Just like the Latin American literary boom -which included the Argentinean Julio
Cortázar, the Mexican Carlos Fuentes, the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez and the
Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, who emerged in the sixties of the twentieth century.
The company's four members are: Mónica Castellanos, Sofía Segovia, María de Alva and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo. Unlike them -originating from different countries-, the four were born and raised in Monterrey. In that city, they began to write and have built a literary work that is considered part of the so-called northern literature movement, increasingly appreciated and read in all latitudes, and whose most notable representatives are Cristina Rivera-Garza herself, Élmer Mendoza, David Toscana, Julián Herbert, Luis Jorge Boone, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Eduardo Antonio Parra, among many others.
Unlike the literary crack that emerged at the end of the twentieth century (Jorge Volpi, Pedro
Ángel Palau, Ignacio Padilla, Eloy Urroz, Vicente Herrasti and Ricardo Chávez
Castañeda), the women writers of Monterrey did not make themselves known under a manifesto, they have not assumed themselves as a group, there is no name that denominates them, but they have the coincidence that they appear together with great frequency presenting their books, talking about literature and history, sharing spaces and projects.
And when I talk about the four women narrators who have renewed the language, who have
I am thinking of Mónica Castellanos, Sofía Segovia, María de Alva and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo, whom I mention in chronological order of birth.
Mónica Castellanos, who has published four works (El drama de los anhelos,
Aquellas horas que nos robaron, Canasta de comadres and Carbon rojo) and obtained the
Antonio García Cubas 2019 award in the category of historical novel for the second of his titles, Aquellas horas que nos robaron, in which he pays tribute to Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques. In Carbón rojo he narrates the explosion of the Pasta de Conchos coal mine, in Coahuila, and the tragedy of the 65 miners who were trapped there, that ill-fated February 19, 2006.
Sofía Segovia is the author of the Spanish-language novel that is probably the most widely read in the world.
has sold in the first five years of the 21st century: El murmullo de las abejas, translated into more than twenty languages, and which has been considered by several literary critics as this century's El agua para chocolate (Water for Chocolate). He has also published Noches de Huracán and Peregrinos, which have been received with great interest by his publishers, who immediately set about the task of arranging translations into other languages, and by an ever-growing legion of readers in all the countries where they have been published.
Recently published De lector a escritor: El manual para contar historias efectivas e inolvidables María de Alva has published Lo que guarda el río, Un corazón extraviado and, recently, Todo lo que no sabemos. The first title is a story set in Monterrey, a stark mirror that reflects the violence of both drug trafficking and natural disasters in the northeast of the country; the second features Pedro Garfias, a Spanish poet belonging to the Generation of '27 who comes to Monterrey to live and ends his days working in a local bookstore; and the third title tells a story framed by the violence unleashed by the guerrillas of the September 23 League in Mexico in the 1970s. Gabriela Riveros Elizondo has written poetry, short stories, essays, novels and children's literature. She has published nearly nine books of novels, short stories, poetry and children's literature. She is the author of Destierros, in which she deals with the Rarámuris, violence, the disappeared, migrants, always marginalized from official history.
In 2022 he published Olvidarás el fuego, which narrates the silenced story of the Sephardic exodus from Spain and Portugal, forced to convert upon their arrival in New Spain; this novel was successfully adapted for the stage by Hernán Galindo.
The four women writers are contemporaries of the highly respected poet and
translator from Chihuahua based in Nuevo León, Jeannette Clariond, who is a
also the founder of "Vaso Roto", one of the most exquisite and prestigious
poetry and essay publishers in the homeland of the ñ. I find, on the other hand, a
The four of them are close to Gabriela Cantú Westendarp, poet and visual artist, who has won, among other awards, the Enriqueta Ochoa National Poetry Prize 2024 and the Ramón López Velarde National Poetry Prize 2012.
Mónica, Sofía and Gabriela appear as members of a literary group
called "The Daughters of the Pandemic", which emerged -as writer Ethel Krauze has formulated it- during the isolation of the 2020 pandemic, "summoned by literature and sisterhood, and as a tribute to the Mexican women who paved the way for the new generations of women writers". In addition to Ethel Krauze, Sofía Segovia and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo, we find the narrators Ligia Urroz, Claudia Marcucetti, Sophie Goldberg, Mónica Hernández, Cristina Liceaga, Mónica Salmón, Victoria Dana, Rayo Guzmán, Tamara Trottner, Paulina Vieitez, Isabel Revuelta Poo, Silvia Cherem, Olga González, Verónica de Llaca, Maura Gómez McGregor, Nadia Jiménez and Valentina Trava.
On the other hand, recently, Liliana Melo de Sada -one of the most admirable and outstanding women of cultural promotion in Nuevo León- invited Mónica, Sofía, María and Gabriela to participate in a literary project that aims to rescue the stories of women of ancient Mexico, and in which several other women writers from Nuevo León participate: Gabriela Cantú Westendarp, Blanca López de Mariscal, Denise Carpintero and Clementina Battcok. This work has been published under the title Mujeres célebres del México antiguo and published by the Paseo de la Mujer Mexicano. The boom. El crack. Sound phenomena, stentorian, stentorian, strenuous, preceded by a masculine article. Made up of men, writers, intellectuals, men of thought.
What can we call a group of women who live in the same city, who have defied the center to continue to live there and manage to publish in transnational publishing houses, who have had their letters translated into other languages, who have had their plays staged, who are commented on in supplements in other countries, who have been invited to literary fairs around the world, who are beginning to reap awards and recognition, whose readers eagerly seek their new publications, who have set out to narrate the little-known history of their region? How to name a group that has been writing, coinciding, creating, promoting their works together for several decades?
Regardless of whether they consider themselves a group, today - March 8, 2025, International Women's Day - I dare to propose a term to name them, Filigrana, la filigrana, with the feminine article preceding it. The definition for the term is thus stated by the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy:
Filigree:
1. Work formed by gold and silver threads, joined and soldered with great perfection and
delicacy.
2. A transparent mark made on the paper at the time of manufacture.
3. Delicate and polished thing.
Yes, Filigrana is the term that defines with precision and poetic irruption this literary group of four women from Monterrey: Monica Castellanos, Sofia Segovia, Maria de Alva and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo.
Mónica Castellanos, who has published four works (El drama de los anhelos,
Aquellas horas que nos robaron, Canasta de comadres and Carbon rojo) and obtained the
Antonio García Cubas 2019 award in the category of historical novel for the second of his titles, Aquellas horas que nos robaron, in which he pays tribute to Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques. In Carbón rojo he narrates the explosion of the Pasta de Conchos coal mine, in Coahuila, and the tragedy of the 65 miners who were trapped there, that ill-fated February 19, 2006.
Sofía Segovia is the author of the Spanish-language novel that is probably the most widely read in the world.
has sold in the first five years of the 21st century: El murmullo de las abejas, translated into more than twenty languages, and which has been considered by several literary critics as this century's El agua para chocolate (Water for Chocolate). He has also published Noches de Huracán and Peregrinos, which have been received with great interest by his publishers, who immediately set about the task of arranging translations into other languages, and by an ever-growing legion of readers in all the countries where they have been published.
Recently published De lector a escritor: El manual para contar historias efectivas e inolvidables María de Alva has published Lo que guarda el río, Un corazón extraviado and, recently, Todo lo que no sabemos. The first title is a story set in Monterrey, a stark mirror that reflects the violence of both drug trafficking and natural disasters in the northeast of the country; the second features Pedro Garfias, a Spanish poet belonging to the Generation of '27 who comes to Monterrey to live and ends his days working in a local bookstore; and the third title tells a story framed by the violence unleashed by the guerrillas of the September 23 League in Mexico in the 1970s.
Gabriela Riveros Elizondo has written poems, short stories, essays, novels and
children's literature. He has published nearly nine books of novels, short stories, poetry and poetry.
children's literature. She is the author of Destierros, which deals with the theme of the Rarámuris, the
violence, the disappeared, the migrants, always marginalized from official history.
In 2022 he published Olvidarás el fuego, which narrates the silenced story of the Sephardic exodus from Spain and Portugal, forced to convert upon their arrival in New Spain; this novel was successfully adapted for the stage by Hernán Galindo.
The four women writers are contemporaries of the highly respected poet and
translator from Chihuahua based in Nuevo León, Jeannette Clariond, who is a
also the founder of "Vaso Roto", one of the most exquisite and prestigious
poetry and essay publishers in the homeland of the ñ. I find, on the other hand, a
The four of them are close to Gabriela Cantú Westendarp, poet and visual artist, who has won, among other awards, the Enriqueta Ochoa National Poetry Prize 2024 and the Ramón López Velarde National Poetry Prize 2012.
Mónica, Sofía and Gabriela appear as members of a literary group
called "The Daughters of the Pandemic", which emerged -as writer Ethel Krauze has formulated it- during the isolation of the 2020 pandemic, "summoned by literature and sisterhood, and as a tribute to the Mexican women who paved the way for the new generations of women writers". In addition to Ethel Krauze, Sofía Segovia and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo, we find the narrators Ligia Urroz, Claudia Marcucetti, Sophie Goldberg, Mónica Hernández, Cristina Liceaga, Mónica Salmón, Victoria Dana, Rayo Guzmán, Tamara Trottner, Paulina Vieitez, Isabel Revuelta Poo, Silvia Cherem, Olga González, Verónica de Llaca, Maura Gómez McGregor, Nadia Jiménez and Valentina Trava.
On the other hand, recently, Liliana Melo de Sada -one of the most admirable and outstanding women of cultural promotion in Nuevo León- invited Mónica, Sofía, María and Gabriela to participate in a literary project that aims to rescue the stories of women of ancient Mexico, and in which several other women writers from Nuevo León participate: Gabriela Cantú Westendarp, Blanca López de Mariscal, Denise Carpintero and Clementina Battcok. This work has been published under the title Mujeres célebres del México antiguo and published by the Paseo de la Mujer Mexicano.
The boom. The crack. Loud, stentorian, strident phenomena, preceded by a masculine article. Made up of men, writers, intellectuals, men of thought.
What can we call a group of women who live in the same city, who have defied the center to continue to live there and manage to publish in transnational publishing houses, who have had their letters translated into other languages, who have had their plays staged, who are commented on in supplements in other countries, who have been invited to literary fairs around the world, who are beginning to reap awards and recognition, whose readers eagerly seek their new publications, who have set out to narrate the little-known history of their region? How to name a group that has been writing, coinciding, creating, promoting their works together for several decades?
Regardless of whether they consider themselves a group, today - March 8, 2025,
international women's day-, I dare to propose a term to name them,
Filigree, filigree, with feminine article preceding it. The definition for the term is thus stated by the dictionary of the Real Academia Española:
Filigree:
1. Work formed by gold and silver threads, joined and soldered with great perfection and
delicacy.
2. A transparent mark made on the paper at the time of manufacture.
3. Delicate and polished thing.
Yes, Filigrana is the term that defines with precision and poetic irruption this literary group of four women from Monterrey: Mónica Castellanos, Sofía Segovia, María de Alva and Gabriela Riveros Elizondo.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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