In the heart of Coyoacán, the neighborhood where Frida Kahlo was born and lived, there is a space that besides being a bookstore is focused on the sale and distribution of handicrafts to take care of the art made by women. U-Tópicas is a space for the creation and dissemination of feminism that combines its air as a small bookshop with a place to give workshops and make exhibitions.
Its owner, Martha Hernández, who defines herself as a “cultural agitator” tells Verne that after many years living in Spain she returned to Mexico with the idea of creating a place for women. “We found it important to give voice and space to artists, in museums and galleries there is not even 30% of art made by women. With literature, the same thing happens, "says Hernández, who says they have more than 2,000 volumes in the place." Many of our books are brought from Spain and Argentina because here they are not there and they are very difficult to find, "says the scriptwriter who believes that feminism is gaining strength in Mexico and therefore is "eager to read and learn about the subject."
"Texts of initiation and introduction to feminism in Mexico are needed because the contexts are very important", so the U-Topic bookstore seeks to have the greatest variety of books on decolonial feminism, gender studies, politics, queer theory, sexuality, masculinities , narrative, maternity and books "for girls, boys and children," as Hernández says.
“When I told my friends that I was going to start this business, they told me I was crazy. I wanted to create a space inspired by the Librería Mujeres in Madrid. Martha Hernández moves between the shelves with her thick dark hair while showing the new findings and the arrival of new textile crafts made by women's cooperatives in Chiapas and Puebla. His mother, also an artist and writer, offers coffee and worries that those who visit the place feel comfortable.
On the walls hangs the portrait of women who marked a milestone in history, the work of the Argentine painter Eulogia Merle. Sr. Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rosario Castellanos, Simone de Beauvoir, Tina Modotti, Janis Joplin, Elena Poniatowska ... are the utopians that preceded those now fighting in 2020 whose figure is increasingly visible. “Limited by their gender, their race, their condition, all these women that you see here had an utopia that achieved it and they achieved it or not at all but they were guided by that ideal and achieved what they could,” says Martha Hernández. that the bookstore had to be called like all of them.
Social networks have helped a lot to advertise, they are your main impulse for people to know them. Donají, a 24-year-old girl acknowledges that it was difficult for her to find books by Brigitte Vasallo until she started visiting the bookstore. “I think she is a very bright woman. I listened to several of his talks and said, I have to read it, ”he says.
The workshops they give in U-Topics are diverse, active and seek to bring together the more people the better. There is about romantic love, sexual diversity, work groups for mothers and daughters and even embroidery sessions.
“I wanted to open a forum so that women could express themselves through art, discussion and reflection,” says Martha Hernández. It seems that he has achieved it by pursuing utopias that are a little closer.
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