Based on a lifetime of living in Mexico and some 10 years of interviewing and listening to the stories of the female survivors and victims of Mexico’s gruesome drug culture, award-winning author Jennifer Clement delivers a deeply poignant novel about hope in the face of darkness. Former ALOUD participant and author Francisco Goldman calls the work, “Beguiling, and even crazily enchanting…gives us words for what we haven’t had words for before.”
In today’s Mexico, truth tellers are murdered, journalists are disappeared. As a novelist, poet, human rights activist, and former President of PEN Mexico, Clement lives ever-so-close to that world, and decided to turn to fiction to tell this story, one that remains hauntingly close to real life, in her latest work, Prayers for the Stolen.
This visceral novel sheds light on the fate of young women in rural Guerrero who live in the shadows of the drug war. In the words of Clement, “Prayers for the Stolen is a novel about Ladydi Garcia Martínez. She is part of a community, like so many in rural Mexico, that has been decimated by drug traffickers, government agricultural policies and illegal immigration. Her home is a village near the once glamorous port of Acapulco. Her story, although inspired by truth, is fiction.”
Join us at ALOUD on Thursday, May 14, for an eye-opening conversation with Jennifer Clement moderated by writer Magdalena Edwards. Simultaneous interpretation into Spanish will be provided by Antena Los Ángeles, as part of ALOUD’s collaboration with LéaLA, Feria del Libro en Español de Los Ángeles, in which Clement will also participate the weekend following ALOUD. Read an excerpt below from Clement’s powerful book, and make your free reservation for the ALOUD program here.