My mother used to tell me

Oral storytelling session with Marta Sáenz de la Calzada, a Spanish woman living in Quebec, on the cultural baggage of immigration.

Request your invitation at the box office or by sending an email to museo@unav.es

Languages: French and Spanish

When an immigrant leaves their country, they don't just bring a suitcase full of clothes, photos, or books. They also travel with dreams of a better future, memories that marked their childhood, and nostalgia for the friends and family they leave behind. A set of images that have defined their outlook, dishes and flavors that have developed their taste, songs that have marked their early years... everything that has shaped their personality travels with them. Our imagination is shaped by our first experiences, our first stories, the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we are told. What remains of these stories when immigrants take them to their host country? What do they tell their own children? How does this cultural baggage shape and enrich the culture of the host countries?

These are the questions that led Marta Sáenz de la Calzada to write a dozen short stories or life stories of immigrants in Abitibi-Témiscamingue ( Quebec, Canada). Stories from places as diverse as Africa (Algeria, Congo, Cameroon), Asia (Vietnam, India), Europe (France, Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia), the Caribbean, and Latin America (Haiti, Colombia, Chile), covering periods of immigration from 1929 to 2010. The book was illustrated by Karine Hébert.

This afternoon at the University of Navarra Museum theater, Marta Sáenz de la Calzada will present a selection of these stories.

PROGRAM

Pending

Martha Saenz de la Calzada

Marta Sáenz de la Calzada is a multidisciplinary artist. She emigrated to Quebec in 1969 from Spain at the end of the Franco regime and settled in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Her artistic talents are expressed in the fields of theater, poetry, and painting, and she has cultivated different disciplines: writing, translation, directing, animation, and acting applied to the field of education (she is part of "Artists at school”).

Since arriving in Quebec, she has participated in Jean Barbeau'sJouez-moi d'amourin 1973,Simone de Beauvoir's La femme rompuein 1984, Dario Fo'sCouple ouvert à deux battantsin 1988, andDes petites choses pour l'eau, a poetic show with Jean-Guy Côté Fo. In 2007, she won her region's Poetry Prize with her collectionDeja que te odie(Let Me Hate You). In 2009, she published the poetry collectionUn corazón de hielo (A Heart of Ice). She is a member of her community's storytelling circle and also works in the field of education.