Mary John (Elastic Books), by the Portuguese writer Ana Pessoa (Lisbon, 1982) has just been recognized with the TodosTusLibros prize awarded by the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Booksellers (Cegal) for the best youth book of 2023. A title that It is not unknown to us, because in 2022 it won the Premi Llibreter in Catalonia, also as the best work for young people in its translation into Catalan edited by Ara Llibres with its youth label L’altra Tribu. A story of heartbreak that has not gone unnoticed, not only because it is written in epistolary form, like an extensive 200-page letter that a young woman writes to her first love, but because of the powerful voice that Pessoa achieves through its protagonist, Maria João, who word by word, phrase by phrase, will build his identity in this beautiful and conflictive stage of adolescence. A song to the stage of the first times and to a warm land where life on the street, in the squares, is part of personal growth and forges an always unforgettable landscape.
What is it about Mary John?
Ugh, I don’t know. For me it has also been a surprise. When I was writing Mary John I didn’t think about the readers, which I think all writers do. And that’s precisely why I wrote Mary John, because when I finished the book I realized that I had written a letter, and nowadays no one writes letters. For me it is a pleasant surprise that an epistolary book has found so many readers, even adults. I think that of all the young adult books I have written, this is the one that has the most adult readers who like to read about adolescence.
What led you to write the novel as a letter?
Letter writing is part of my training. It was a very popular format in the nineties and I wanted to pay tribute to them. From the beginning I wanted to write a single letter, not a correspondence between two people. I wanted a single voice in a long letter and I searched for a long time for the theme of that letter.
First came the letter, then.
Yes, it had no theme, just the intuition that it should be a letter full of pain, with that more intimate tone that letters have.
Adolescence is a recurring theme in his works.
I think that adolescence is not that different from adulthood, but in it you are dealing with many emotions and events for the first time. And since literature has to do with that process of the human condition, that you know that one day you have to die, that the present moment will pass, and literature deals a lot with that frustration of being alive, for me it has been very natural to link it with adolescence.
It also happened that my first book, The Red Notebook of the Karate Girl, was published by Planeta Tangerina, which is a Portuguese publisher that works with illustrated books and opened for me that door of working with illustrators, a path that we have taken together.
He has said on occasion that Mary John has allowed him to reconcile with his own adolescence.
Adolescence is a very hard process but at the same time very beautiful. I don’t know if Mary John is a happy book or not, it depends on the readers, but it is a very feminine book, very feminist, in the sense that there is this discovery of the woman who is in transformation and that transformation is always made through from the eyes of that boy from the plaza, Julio, who is the one who is going to validate her existence, her entire process of feminine construction. When everything changes, the context, the circumstances, the friends, and there is that space of tolerance and the possibility of development, that is when she gains that voice, that will to grow and assert herself.
And what does it have to do with yourself?
Not so much Mary John, but that context of landscape, of architecture, which is very specific to the southern countries: the placeta… I have lived in Brussels for a long time and I was part of a writing group at the time when that Mary John wrote. Whenever I read descriptions of that square, there were opinions from people from other countries who did not identify with that space, which is a public space but at the same time private, because it is something a little suburban, which gives that feeling of belonging but also of exclusion. It has been very natural for me to write about that, because I come from that context.
There are also things in Mary John’s story that have to do with me, things about her sensitivity and that of other characters. We all know people like Liliana; more indiscreet people, more sexual, more provocative too, but I think she is not a bad person. There are episodes of Mary John that didn’t happen to me, but writing has that process of mixing things we know well with people who are part of our lives and who later become literary characters.
You say you don’t write for teenagers.
Everything in my artistic life is very nostalgic, because I do not have a relationship with a literary medium in Portugal, I do not go to bookstores in Portugal, I am not with readers. But I have the feeling that my readers are mostly adults. I also don’t have much contact with teenagers, and that is something that always surprises readers. I have friends who are adults and that’s why I say that I write about adolescence, but I don’t know if I write for teenagers.
Is this really the story of a toxic relationship as it has sometimes been described?
I have doubts about that, because toxic always implies negative energy, also intentional, and I don’t think there is that toxicity on the part of anyone here. There is a question of expectations, of a lack of communication skills that creates situations that are not pleasant but I don’t think there are bad characters in the book. There are misunderstandings between them, and he, Julio, is not sensitive to Mary John’s feelings, but we cannot blame him for that because adolescence is a very individual and very selfish process. She also has desires that are hers alone.
The trigger for everything is a question. When Julio asks Mary John if he is a boy or a girl. ¿Why is it so important?
It is a book where she explores her identity and it begins when she is with new people who ask her who that boy (Julio) is and why he is so important to her, why she depends so much on him. That letter is a journey from the beginning of the relationship and that is the first meeting, it is the fundamental question, because it is the first and because it calls into question her identity. There is also a question of interpretation of Mary John, as if the entire book is an answer to that question. All of childhood, all of adolescence is Mary John searching for that identity of being a woman and affirming herself with that identity.
Mary John, as well as many girls still need to transform to satisfy someone. What do you tell them as an author?
That it is very important to have one or more personal passions. There is our answer: knowing what we are doing with our time, the way you spend the minutes, the days, the people you are with… is essentially the way you are going to spend your life. You can be in that dependent relationship or where you always have to feel that you are accepted, but the most important thing is to know what you have to say about life. Finding your passions is the most important thing and that saves you from everything. You are lonelier when you find your passions, but those same ones will connect you with the world in new and surprising ways.
What are you working on now?
For the first time in many years I am not writing. The world is in such a dark moment and is transforming so quickly that I feel, as a woman and as a writer, that I have to pay attention. That means not necessarily writing stories.
There is good feedback between Portuguese and Spanish literary production.
Definitely not. It’s surprising, being neighbors. I have no idea who is writing youth literature in Spain, but on the other hand we are constantly in contact with English-speaking literature, which is automatically translated. We don’t know anything about each other, but I don’t know why. It is a strange phenomenon and I would like it to change. For example, Mary John has also been translated in the Netherlands, in Holland, and some reactions I received from readers have been very different from the intention of the book. The text has an intention of melancholy, of travel, of searching for identity, and some readers have written to me saying that they do not understand this type of melancholy, which can be cultural. I think the world loses a lot if that contact between cultures does not occur, if we are always looking for the same type of plot, of literature.
How has being in Belgium for 17 years influenced you?
The fact of having a great contact with comics, which here in Belgium is very strong, spectacular I would say, has influenced my work, of course. But when I write, I always do it in Portuguese, it is my language and I cannot write in any other. She transports me to a past time and that also has an impact on the tone and themes.
