Donkey belly is a novel that brings together the hard work of a young Canarian journalist, Andrea Abreu, and her editor, Sabina Urraca. They both tell how they ventured into the creation and editing of this work amidst their dizzying lives, where they interspersed work days with getaways to cafes to talk about the book and other issues with friends. A novel that reflects the freshness of a young woman determined to give birth to an exciting project. It was not easy. She had to work a lot in different sectors to survive while she was studying.
Originally from Tenerife, Abreu's novel is steeped in the culture of her native island. She proudly uses Canarian expressions and is a “dirty” work, as she mentions, of everyday adventures in the Canary Islands, far from the intention of promoting the island. We present to you Donkey Belly, a very special review for this occasion. She continues reading to find out more about the work.
Synopsis
«I admit that at the beginning, when Panza de burro had only grown a few chapters, I thought it would be a simple and beautiful novel that would open an ax in that greenhouse fabric that seemed to hide an imaginary and a world that should be shown. Later, The greatness of the book, Andrea's intelligence and savagery, her poetic pulse and her total lack of fear tore the raffia to pieces., and an intricate, painful, immense, far from simple plantation came into view. I did the first edition in a salon in Lisbon, and I think that was when I realized that the book was much bigger than I imagined. Also, and this is important, I felt envy. "An envy for the impossibility of writing something like that."
Sabina Urraca.
About the author
Andrea Abreu
Andrea Abreu was born in 1995 at the top of a town, always cloudy, in the north of Tenerife. He grew up among cats and witch flowers and, when he turned eighteen, he began his journalism studies at the University of La Laguna (ULL). After countless changes of residence, she moved to Madrid in the summer of 2017, to study the Master in Cultural Journalism and New Trends at the Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC). Since then, she has been an intern, waitress and sales assistant for a famous lingerie brand.
As a journalist, he has written for the Culture section of the newspaper 20 Minutos and for different media., such as Tentaciones (El País), Oculta Lit, LOLA (BuzzFeed), Quimera or Vice. His literary texts have been included in several digital and paper magazines. Also in anthologies such as Macaronesia, from La Galla Ciencia; The drunken boys, an anthology of very young transoceanic poetry, by La Tribu, or Piel fina. Young Spanish poetry (Maremágnum, 2019).
She is the author of the collection of poems Woman without Eyelids (Versátiles Editorial, 2017) and the fanzine Primavera que sangra (2017), a brief poetic analysis of her relationship with menstrual pain, which will appear this year in the Demipage publishing house.
He has participated in several literary events, such as the Cordoba poetry festival Cosmopoética 2018 and is co-director of the Alcalá de Henares Young Poetry Festival. Last 2019 she was the second prize winner of the XXXI Ana María Matute Prize for women's fiction. Donkey Belly is her first novel.
Why donkey belly?
The work is titled in honor of the Canary Islands, where a meteorological phenomenon occurs that is called: “donkey belly.”
The meteorological phenomenon “Panza de burro”
The sky the color of a donkey's belly (as it is designated in Peru) or simply donkey belly (so called in the Canary Islands) is an expression to name a meteorological phenomenon that occurs in regions of these latitudes. It consists of the accumulation of low-altitude clouds that act as a solar screen, causing a thermal sensation of coolness, characteristic of the north of almost all the Canary Islands (especially in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). It is a phenomenon that occurs as a result of the trade winds that frequent the Canary archipelago.
Foreword
[...]Panza de burro was my first experience as an editor and I am still impressed by the process, as if she had just come down from the crazy rides at the fair, a little beaten up from so many pushes. Editing a book that I like so much has seemed like adopting a strange animal from an exotic country: you take it into your arms, afraid that it will attack you, you begin to love it more and more, you shelter it, you bathe it, you care for it. eat, you de-louse it. You know that he will always be with you, that you will love him madly, although, at the same time, you always keep in mind that he comes from a far away place […]
[...]If I had to describe or invite someone to read Donkey Belly, to go to that patio of ravaged ferns, to sit in that little plastic chair so that the devil could get inside him, to fill himself—instead of emptying himself—with passions and envies, I wouldn't know how to do it, the truth. If I had to define the book in front of an audience, I wouldn't know how to do it without crying a little, honestly. Donkey belly is a feverish novel. Pollutes. This paragraph, in fact, is absolutely stained with its style, dirty […]
Sabina Urraca.
A brief introduction to Donkey Belly
Paseo de San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Santa Cruz de Tenerife)
These sections of the extensive prologue prepared by the editor of Abreu's book, Sabina Urraca, are very representative and perfectly embody the nature of the novel: feverish, "dirty", difficult to describe... We could say that It is a beautiful and creative “mess” in prose impregnated with Canarian culture. This is how we could define donkey belly.
The novel is structured in chapters with the most suggestive titles in the purest Canarian style. Without going any further, the prologue begins like this: Sit on this plastic chair, my children., by Sabina Urraca. Then it gives way to the beginning of the work with the first two chapters that read like this: ““So confident, so fearless” and "“Just a tax.”
And as this last mention says, we can only offer you a fisquito just of this work. If you are interested in knowing more about Panza de Burro, perhaps it is time to pick up the book and get lost in its pages.