Women and Power in Argentine Literature: Stories, Interviews, and Critical Essays

10. Mar

María Kodama is a petite and striking figure. Her eyes reveal both a woman of serene intelligence and a sensitive and vulnerable soul. Her voice is soft and smooth like a quiet, hidden creek. She has naturally streaked hair; a dark brown layer lies beneath a layer of platinum gray. Elegantly unconventional , her demeanor and style reveal a fondness for the unique. Her presence conveys grace, subtlety, and introspection. María Kodama THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK María Kodama | The Author and Her Work María Kodama was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her father, who was Japanese, had emigrated to Argentina, where he met his future wife at a welcome party held by friends upon his arrival to the new country. Mrs. Kodama, originally from Uruguay, had studied piano and French. A devotée of music, she taught piano while her daughter was young. Mr. Kodama was a chemist and an aficionado of the arts, particularly painting. Kodama remembers her father as a sensitive and bright man who taught her respect for others and a love of beauty and the arts. Kodama attended the public schools of her neighborhood, an uptown residential area near the Recoleta Mausoleum. In the 1960s, she attended the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires and graduated with the title of Professor, the title required for teaching. It was there that she took classes and became acquainted with Ana María Barrenechea, the Argentine scholar whose stellar career centered on scholarship about the works of Jorge Luis Borges. While attending the university, Kodama worked teaching Spanish to international professionals, particularly Japanese, who had come to work in Argentina . She contacted her students through various embassies, particularly those of Japan, Turkey, and Great Britain, o¬ering her services as an instructor to diplomats and businessmen who needed to learn Spanish. She also taught them Argentine literature and art. Kodama’s relationship with Borges began when she was merely sixteen. At this time she agreed to study Anglo-Saxon with him, and they met periodically to learn the language together. With time they grew closer, and she became not only his reader, as he began to lose his eyesight, but also his confidant and travel partner. When she began her university career she also began to imagine and write short stories. She published her first story, “Altamira,” in La Nación newspaper in the 1960s, but was careful not to take advantage of Borges’ status to promote her own career; her writing took second place to her life experiences with the literary genius. For many years Kodama and Borges were a team. She read to him, transcribed many of his works, and traveled all over the world to accompany him to lectures, readings, and conferences in his honor. Eventually they fell in love. Kodama sustains that she had never wanted to marry anyone, perhaps because of the pain she had su¬ered when her own parents separated, but after many maría kodama 235 years together she accepted Borges’ proposal to marry. Her marriage to him toward the end of his life was very controversial within Argentine society and the literary community. As a result, Kodama endured both the scorn and the envy of her detractors. Though she has written three collections of short stories, Kodama has not published much of her fiction. Only a few individual stories have been published . “Leonor,” which appeared in La Nación newspaper’s Suplemento literario (Literary Supplement) in 1987, depicts the overwhelming power that parents have over the psychological formation of their children, particularly when the children are rejected or ignored. Leonor is a young girl who has been neglected and betrayed by her parents. The pain of her loss is so great that she retreats into her own imagination, eventually becoming alienated from everyone and everything, losing herself in a world of fantasy. Perhaps reminiscent of the author’s own pain su¬ered during her parents’ separation, the story succeeds in portraying the feeling of loneliness and betrayal from the perspective of a sensitive young soul. It captures the ancestral feeling of loss experienced when a loved one abandons a child. It also conveys the innocence of a young girl who is delicate and fragile, yet also strong and determined. Kodama’s style in this and other stories is subtle, concise, and poetic. Her prose is rooted in...