Mexican Author Stresses Need to Avoid the Language of the Establishment Latin American Herald Tribune
go to original May 5, 2017

Mexican author Emiliano Monge, during an interview with EFE in Bogota (EFE)

Mexican author Emiliano Monge says he painstakingly chooses the words he puts to paper and that as part of that effort he uses language that differs from the establishment voice.

“Language is the first place we confront politics, and authors therefore must opt for words and phrases that differ from the language) of power,” Monge told EFE in an interview in Bogota.

He said that in recent years one reads in Mexican newspapers the phrase “levanton” – from the verb “levantar” (pick up) – to describe a crime in which a suspected gang member is taken away in a vehicle by members of a rival outfit and never heard from again.

“No. They were kidnapped and murdered,” the author said.

Monge was among the participants in the April 25-May 8 Bogota International Book Fair and used the occasion to meet with some of his readers, an audience that has grown thanks to the success of his recent novels “Las tierras arrasadas” and “La superficie mas honda,” both published by Literatura Random House.

Ubiquitous in both works is the drug-related violence that ravages his homeland and which he conveys to the reader via a linguistic style that is short on flowery prose and heavy on cynicism and crude slang.

“You have to say things the way they are and face up to them,” the 39-year-old Mexico City native said.

Read the rest at Latin American Herald Tribune

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