We are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

We are Geen and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Argentinian fiction

Original title – Las niñas del naranjal

Translator – Robin Myers

Source – Personal copy

I have read the two other books to have come out in English from this writer, and I was.  A fan of Slum Virgins, which was her Debut book.  But this had been on my radar, not least because both the UK and US editions of the book have very eye-catching cover art, so I would have got to see that she is part of this wonderful crop of strong female voices from Latin America.  I often say that, over the 16-plus years I have been around the blogosphere, the nature of Latin American fiction has shifted from very Male-heavy to fairly even these days.  Gabriella is a creative writing teacher, so she will no doubt be setting forth the next generation of great Argentine writers for us all to read.  This book, like the other book, features a woman in a male world, this time living as a man in the New World.  Antonio is writing back to her home and the priory where her aunt, the Prioress of the Basque Priory, lives.

…that is a story I will tell you in time, dear aunt. Let me tell you now about the fragrances of the forest, which are strong as the spirits soldiers drink, as village rotgut, and about the other flowers, mammoth and fleshy and carnivorous, nearly beasts, for bere in the jungle the animals bloom and the plants bite, and I believe I have even seen them walking, I swear this to you, and leaping, for vines do leap; all things seethe bere, whereas the forest rustles, as well you know; I remember your attention to the presence of the fox, with its faint rustle of leaves in your forest, and to the bear, with its beavy rustle of trunks and branches; the forest rustles, but not the jungle, the jungle seethes, full of eyes; life surges inside it as lava surges in volcanoes, as if the lava were trees and birds and musbrooms and monkeys and coatis and coconuts and snakes and ferns and caimans and tigers and trumpet trees and fish and vipers and palms and rivers and fronds, and all other things within it were amalgams of these primary ones.

Writing to the Aunt about the world she is in the New World

The book is a mix of these letters home.  Narrative it tells the tale of Antonio in her adventures in the New World or Cayalina as she was known has seen it all the violence of the old world hanging death of native culture as the conquestordors move opn the the country as they are trying to conquer the New world and this is how He Antoino has ended up with a ragtag bunch around him two Two Gurani girls he saved from a life of slavery a couple of monkeys hand horse in this Jugle where the world becomes a mix of dreams and nightmares as she recounts the vents she had seen to get where she had been with her jounrey to the new world from singing on a ship to the various other jobs he had along the way ad s the book goes on the Jungle itself is almost a character as the bunch try to escape can the find a place this is a book that has a lot of layers for such a short book.

He hears the rattle. A snake. He’s lucky to have his sword within reach. A bit blunted but better than nothing. He stands, armed, and stamps the earth with his feet. He listens. Silence, save the growls of the dog slowly calming. The horses wander back. He wants to keep writing. He needs to leave the girls somewhere safe. The tree. He wraps them in his cape. Michi is so weak that he supports her head by pulling the cloth taut.

He puts the monkeys in, too, binding them to his back, and climbs. He lays them down in a nest-like gathering of boughs and ties the cape to the strongest branch. He sits with them.

An African once told him tales of enormous serpents. One had swallowed an elephant. It looked like a hat, said the man. His troops wouldn’t need an enormous one to devour them. Any old serpent could gobble the girls and the monkeys for breakfast.

In the jungle it is alive at times

I think this is a book that maybe could have done with being a little longer.  There are a lot of ideas, the church, religion, the new world, woman in a man’s world, so many, it is like it has been stuffed into a box and is fit to burst.  I feel that maybe means the book suffers at times; it is a great book.  I still like SLum virgin best of her books, but that may just be me being a reader who finds books set near my own time much easier to connect with.  The main character is based on a real figure from the time, a woman who lived as a man in the New World.  I kept going back to the Filmsof Werner Herzog set in the New World and imagining if Klaus Kinski’s character Aguiree had been had been a trans character in the Jungle, it would be like this book a man tinged by the violence of the world they are in another film that cmae to mind around the two girls was Apocalypto the shere violence that is seen at times.  I believe the writer herself has highlighted Studio Ghibli as an influence on her writing.  I just felt it would have been a better five-hundred-page book than the 200 it is, and I rarely think that it is a book jam-packed with ideas and history, and a character at the heart of the book that should have been better known as a trailblazer for their time.  Have you read this or any of her other books ?