Moi, ma mére me racontait

Oral storytelling session with Marta Saenz de la Calzada, a Spaniard living in Quebec, on the cultural background of immigration.

Request your invitation at the box office or by sending an e-mail to museo@unav.es.

Languages: French and Spanish

When an immigrant leaves his country, he does not only bring with him a suitcase with clothes, photos or books. He also travels with dreams of a better future, memories that marked his childhood, nostalgia for the friends and family he leaves behind. A set of images that have defined his look, dishes and flavors that have developed his taste, songs that have marked his early years... everything that has shaped his personality travels with him. Imagination is shaped by our first experiments, our first stories, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones they tell us. What remains of these stories when immigrants take to their host country? What do they tell their own children? How does this cultural baggage shape and enrich the culture of the host countries?

These are the questions that led Marta Sáenz de la Calzada to write a dozen stories or life histories of the immigrants of Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Quebec, Canada). Stories from origins as diverse as Africa (Algeria, Congo, Cameroon), Asia (Vietnam, India), Europe (France, Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia), the Caribbean and Latin America (Haiti, Colombia, Chile) and covering periods of immigration from 1929 to 2010. The book was illustrated by Karine Hébert.

This afternoon at the theater of the Museo Universidad de Navarra, Marta Sáenz de la Calzada presents a selection of these stories.

PROGRAM

Pending

MARTA SÁENZ DE LA CALZADA

Marta Sáenz de la Calzada is a multidisciplinary artist. She emigrated to Quebec in 1969 from Spain at the end of Franco's regime and settled in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Her artistic facets are developed in the fields of theater, poetry and painting and she has cultivated different disciplines: writing, translation, directing, animation and interpretation applied to the field of education (she is part of "Artists at school").

Since her arrival in Quebec, she participated in 'Joualez-moi d'amour', by Jean Barbeau in 1973, 'La femme rompue de Simone de Beauvoir' in 1984, 'Couple ouvert a? deux battants', by Dario Fo in 1988 or 'Des petites choses pour l'eau', a poetry show with Jean-Guy Côté Fo. In 2007 he won the Poetry Prize of his region with his collection "Let me hate you". In 2009 he published the collection of poems "A heart of ice". She is a member of the storytelling circle of her community and also works in the field of education.