Quito, May 18 (EFE).- “The Evil Lady Visa,” a story by Chilean author Ana Carlota Gonzalez, is being told in Quito this Friday in the 12th Storybook Marathon, which will continue until next Sunday, and which this year has migration as its central theme.
According to Gonzalez, president of the Ecuadorian Association of Children’s Books (Girandula) and author of a story to be read and distributed during the marathon, writers wish to present through a variety of literary tales the ups and downs of migration.
These include the frustration divided families must endure when parents are abroad and their families back home are ensnared in procedures to get their visas so they can be legally reunited, which forms the storyline of “The Evil Lady Visa” (La Malvada Señora Visa).
In that story, in the midst of a family waiting for their visas to be approved, a child believes the visa “is like a bad-tempered neighbor who doesn’t give your ball back and thinks she’s like a teacher who punishes you because she has heard that you and your family are afraid of that visa,” Gonzalez told EFE.
“After a long wait, at last they know their visas have arrived because mom has a yellow envelope with the papers,” so they start getting ready to join daddy, of whom they have a rather foggy remembrance, until they see him and remember all his love and affection.
Meanwhile, with the story “Un Rostro al Otro Lado del Rio” (A Face on the Other Side of the River), the Ecuadorian writer Maria Eugenia Delgado tells of some chidren who emigrate but can’t take their pet, which remains on the other side of the river.
Those are just two of the 10 stories created especially for the marathon based on migration and which will be given to those attending the event taking place at the Itchimbia Cultural Center in Quito.
Gonzalez recalls that in 2017 there was a great flood of immigrants, especially Venezuelans, to Ecuador, which in times past also had many citizens emigrating to find a better life.
She said that in stories one finds migration-related subjects that speak of friendship, differences, affection, and the difficulties of adapting to unknown places and being accepted by people of different cultures.
“By reading and facing problems that appear in books and stories, we’re also growing as persons, because we must look within ourselves to find the solutions,” Gonzalez said.