Son[i]a #388 Macarena García
- 00:01 Our bodies as we read
- 04:34 What is it that makes literature children’s?
- 08:19 Picture-books: a synergistic relationship between images and words
- 23:12 Nightmares and crying: why are there some emotions that we don’t allow? How can we embrace those moments?
- 40:16 Potential and expectations in reading. Notes on intensive parenting
- 44:31 Social-emotional educational agendas and "The Colour Monster": on the relationship between neoliberalism and emotional culture.
- 52:05 The normativity of happiness and happy endings
- 59:17 "Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls": why does children’s literature struggle with feminisms?
Chilean writer, editor and academic Macarena García (Santiago de Chile, 1980) thinks of herself as a researcher. For her, research is a way of looking—an empirical, collaborative and transdiciplinary practice through which things are produced. Her work focuses on the co-production of culture, politics, ethics and society, with special attention to the fields of childhood, children’s literature and education.
In this podcast, we talk to Macarena García about her working methods with children in schools and other shared educational spaces. We talk about challenging picture-books, about fascination and overflow as tools for collective transformation, and about what happens to bodies when they are together. We also explore the workings of censorship and how children’s literature approaches subjects such as death, sex, racism, dictatorship, feminism, gender identity and the climate crisis.
Conversation: Loli Acebal and Anna Ramos. Script: Loli Acebal. Sound production: André Chêdas. Voice over: Violeta Ospina. Sounds: Radio Web MACBA Working Group, from Ina GRM.
Image from the picture-book "La madre y la muerte/La partida" by Alberto Laiseca and Alberto Chimal