[Photo Credit: David Castellano]
In times of remarkable challenges, we cannot help but think of those people who have grab them and make them paths for creation, inspiring and teaching.
Australian author, feminist activist and political provocateur Marcela del Sol is certainly a person whose light has always helped brighten others and it is because Marcela, a survivor of sexual abuse who lives with a mental disorder, among other things she has exemplarily been able to live with, has taken all those experiences and turn them into books but not just standard literature: much like herself – brave, passionate and beautiful – her work doesn’t contemplate subtlety as a way to filter the world for the reader.
“I don’t believe in unnecessary sophistication, especially as a way to elevate one’s work above the reader. The world of literature is full of authors competing for erudition, they forget about truth. Truth must transcend, despite the fact that our names might be forgotten, we must inform, not just entertain.” Says del Sol.
This takes us to paragraphs of her first best selling book “Kaleidoscope: my life’s multiple reflections”, which tells us about Lucia, a beautiful woman who lives with Dissociative Identity Disorder (like Marcela), and her heart wrenching life story. Marcela’s incredible literary talent is undoubtedly demonstrated on this book, her first self signed book. Del Sol is capable to write audaciously, lustily (some say her book puts “those shades” to shame), and viciously, and inject comical episodes in between, yet she entwines a honest literary piece with congruence. Her work makes you excited, lustful, sad, angry and unfulfilled, as you will want more.
But not only her work is what reminds us of Marcela today. She is one of those many people who have been left stranded due to the epidemic outbreak. Having travelled with her youngest son to Chile (her birth country) for a few months, borders closures mean that they’ll probably remain unable to return to Australia for an undetermined period of time.
“I believe it is a learning curve, imperative to reconsider the whole spectrum of things we might have understood as established. I love the time with my son, although I deeply miss my daughter (who is back home in Australia). But, without sounding too hippish, I feel this is a time when you really concede that “everything happens for a reason and when it must happen” proves truthful.”
We imagine Chile must be proudly enjoying del Sol’s extended stay. We certainly hope to see her around here sooner rather than later, and imagine the masterpiece she must be conceiving under these global circumstances that could have been written by Shakespeare, de Sade and Woolf together.
Follow Marcela’s work here: https://www.facebook.com/marcela.delsol.3/
https://www.facebook.com/MarcelaDelSolOfficial