First clarification: the writers and editors who were born between the early nineties and the early 2000s are not identified by year of birth, nor by the label assigned to their generation. Neither Z, nor centennial, nor millennial delay. Any name seems to them (according to the answers of all the interviewees) a limitation. "An Anglo-Saxon imposition. It responds to the needs of marketing ”, in the words of the philosopher and youtuber Ernesto Castro (Madrid, 29 years old), one of the members of this group. "It is interesting to talk about what resists being named as generational, because in addition, these reductions are very easily assimilated by the market", accompanies the poet Angela Segovia (Las Navas del Marqués, 33 years old). For this reason - without trying to invent another category - their seams are woven with the themes they write about, which are also the ones they share on their social networks (where everything usually begins and ends for them).
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Interview with Elizabeth Duval
To be more precise —in this exercise of staying on the margins of any delimitation—, here comes the second clarification once again raised with incisive insistence on their answers: this group of authors is in feminism, but does not consider it a topic, "Rather a critical perspective that forces us to review each subject in a socially and ethically responsible way," says Juan F. Rivero (Seville, 28 years old), poet ( Canícula ) and editor at libros.com. "It is a way of problematizing reality", explains Rosa Berbel (Granada, 23 years old), author of Las chicas siempre dice la teert (Hiperión), Antonio Carvajal Prize for Poetry. "What use is it that we all talk about feminism if the speeches are softened and absorbed by the system?" Asks Segovia, Miguel Hernández National Prize for Young Poetry in 2017 and author of They put a magüey under my mother .
"There is nothing new under the sun", clarifies the writer Haizea M. Zubieta (Madrid, 27 years old) specialized in youth literature ( Infinitas , Roca), "but I don't think the message about love and identity has much to do with it that can be transmitted by a high-class man, cishetero, white, of advanced age, with whom a young person who does not fall into any of these categories can narrate. What distinguishes us is the way of approaching the issues ”.
The term generation is, for Ernesto Castro, "an Anglo-Saxon imposition that responds to the needs of marketing"
That look that Zubieta mentions is placed on the young people, their peers. This group writes of precariousness - "In a broad sense: economic-labor but also loving and family", says Berbel -, of the environmental collapse, of identity and queer theory, of empty Spain and cities, of language (its constant questioning), of how politics is redefined from 15M to 8M (including the Catalan conflict).
“There is a break with the social and political identity. With the expectations of what is expected of a good citizen: work, home, family, ”says Angelo Nestore (Lecce, Italy, 33 years old), writer and editor of Letraversal, the label published by Excepción by Elizabeth Duval (Madrid, 19 years old). "It is a review of TS Elliot and last year's protests in Catalonia," he describes from the first collection of poems of which he is already one of the most visible faces of this generation.
The voice of a generation
The working days of Carlos Catena (Jaén, 25 years old), Hyperion award, on the job insecurity of young people (in verse) is another of the exponents for many of these authors. None, however, is capable of giving a name or a work and making it the voice of their generation. Another concept (and there are already three clarifications) that they consider outdated.
From The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) to Normal People (Sally Rooney), the history of literature has been on the lookout for spokesmen. None of the interviewees wants the title, although they could become heirs to Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, Zadie Smith and Lena Dunham, among others. Duval summed up the rejection well in the presentation of his latest book: "We are privileged." In other words, with the media focus on, they prefer to avoid assuming this burden.
"What use is it that we all talk about feminism if the discourses are softened and absorbed by the system?" Asks Angela Segovia
Castro, author of El trap (Errata Naturae), materializes it with numbers: “There is a thing called literature that nobody consults until many pages are printed and then it seems that Ernesto Castro and the coronavirus are just as relevant. But it is a ridiculous importance: I can sell 3,000 copies in a country of 47 million inhabitants ”.
With this account in the portfolio and mind of this generation, living exclusively in literature, they say, is "a chimerical question." They are defined - this time yes - by binary categories: they are writers and editors, writers and teachers, writers and journalists, writers and eternal candidates for scholarships that allow them to finance their work.
Poetry and First Dates
Poetry, for now, has obtained the approval of this group of authors to mark certain features of a common personality. “ Field notebook , by María Sánchez (La Bella Varsovia, 2017), has not only achieved successive reprints, but has also generated a clear stylistic trend. Or the poetic bets of authors like Berta García Faet, Ángela Segovia, Rodrigo García Marina or Enrique Fuenteblanca, who extract and imbricate their language with the most current orality, just as I have tried to do in Canícula (2019), "he says. Juan. F. Rivero.
"The difficult thing is to stop to think: 'Well, if young people like this thing, is it possible that it has any value?" Says Haizea M. Zubieta
Something similar happens with autofiction. In this category Duval includes his first novel, Reina (Trojan Horse). And within this genre, specifically, in the French autofiction of authors like Virginie Despentes, Castro frames part of the coincidences of this generation. He adds two other literary currents: the essay and the philosophy, for, he says, "to count the overcoming of postmodernity and the dehypothesisation of culture."
They move away - or so they say - from the hipster and also from any attempt to continue with the debate about what is high and low culture. "There are tribunes and pulpits that are kept apart - with a contemptible condescension - from everything that does not directly or indirectly reinforce the status quo that feeds them," says Rivero. "You have to analyze the center, stain your hands, that's what Elizabeth has done with her books, by appropriating the haters [the insults she receives in networks are reflected in the strips of her books] or by going to a program like First Dates ”, continues Nestore. Zubieta adds: “Elitism poisons. The difficult thing is to stop and think: 'Well, if young people like this thing, is it possible that it has any value?' And Segovia concludes: “Perhaps in this generation, in Spain, a kind of 'if you can't cope with the enemy join it' has begun to be seen in ultra-ironic terms, which is a way of reusing and trying to divert the resources generated by the system neoliberal ”.