\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t Another day, another coronation of glory for Argentina, goes the meme born in the country\u2019s sprawling digital world (if you\u2019re interested, here\u2019s an explanation of the concept). It wasn\u2019t sports or culinary greatness that bagged the prize this time, but culture: Argentine writer Gabriela Cabez\u00f3n C\u00e1mara\u2019s We Are Green and Trembling won the 76th National Book Award in the Translated Literature category.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cabez\u00f3n C\u00e1mara is the third Argentine to win the award, following Julio Cortazar\u2019s Hopscotch in 1967 (the first winner in that category) and Samantha Schweblin\u2019s Seven Empty Houses in 2022. Together with the Man Booker Prize, it is considered the top literary prize in the English language.<\/p>\n
The 2025 winners were announced in a ceremony last Wednesday, where Rabih Alameddine\u2019s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) topped the Fiction category.\u00a0<\/p>\n
C\u00e1mara gave an acceptance speech at the event where she received the award. \u201cI\u2019ll speak in Spanish because I know some fascists don\u2019t like that,\u201d C\u00e1mara said, adding that she wanted to express her gratitude to Argentine public education and its workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout free and public education, working-class people like me would never ever be able to stand here,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n
The awarded book We Are Green and Trembling is based on the true story of Catalina de Erauso, a former nun born in 1592 in the Basque Country. She would eventually flee the convent and transition to a male military officer and conquistador in America named Antonio de Erauso. In the New World, Antonio\u2019s story sees him rescue two Guaran\u00ed girls from enslavement and suffer persecution, as he is hounded by the army he deserted.<\/p>\n
Winner of the 2024 Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz Prize, the most renowned prize for novels published in Spanish and written by a woman, the novel is described by New Directions Publishing as \u201ca queer baroque satire, a surreal picaresque rich with wildly imaginative language and searing critique of subjugation, colonialism, and tyranny of all kinds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Poet Robin Myers, the book\u2019s English translator, with whom the writer will share the US$10,000 prize, stood next to C\u00e1mara on the ceremony stage. She translated C\u00e1mara\u2019s statement and described the novel as dealing with \u201cthe infinite diversity and mutability of language over time, the scorch of colonialism, the power of tenderness, and the ability of the natural world to exist and resist beyond human horror.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A key figure in contemporary Latin American literature, Cabez\u00f3n C\u00e1mara graduated from the University of Buenos Aires and worked as a culture journalist for many years, writing for several Argentine media outlets like P\u00e1gina12, Le Monde diplomatique, and Revista \u00d1. She also sat as a Culture editor for Clar\u00edn newspaper. Ever since the publication of her first novel Slum Virgin, she has explored characters on the margins of society and themes like prostitution, the gaucho tradition, and trans women.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A previous novel of hers, The Adventures of China Iron \u2014\u00a0 a re-write of the classic folk poem Mart\u00edn Fierro from a feminist, LGBT, postcolonial point of view \u2014 was praised by The New York Times and shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Both novels have been translated into English and published by Charco Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another day, another coronation of glory for Argentina, goes the meme born in the country\u2019s sprawling digital world (if you\u2019re interested, here\u2019s an explanation of the concept). It wasn\u2019t sports or culinary greatness that bagged the prize this time, but culture: Argentine writer Gabriela Cabez\u00f3n C\u00e1mara\u2019s We Are Green and Trembling won the 76th National […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3816,309,149,3817,308,3818,3819,3820],"tags":[3810,3664,133,3811,3812,3813,3814,3815],"class_list":["post-11133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-argentine-literature","category-books","category-culture-ideas","category-gabriela-cabezon-camara","category-literature","category-national-book-awards","category-robin-myers","category-we-are-green-and-trembling","tag-argentine-literature","tag-books","tag-culture-ideas","tag-gabriela-cabezon-camara","tag-literature","tag-national-book-awards","tag-robin-myers","tag-we-are-green-and-trembling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}