• January
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Archipelago Books

January

January

by Sara Gallardo, translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy

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Available as E-Book Latin American Literature
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January is the story of a 16-year-old farmworker named Nefer. In the Argentine pampas, all things bow to Nefer. Reeds nod when she digs her heels into her horse, unripe peaches snap and fall as she gallops past. Sickly-sweet air bends, churns in Nefer’s throat. Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, and feels something filling her up, turning against her. Her belly swells. Desperate, Nefer visits a local medicine woman who is known to perform abortions but Nefer becomes too afraid to explain why she is truly there. She attends confession at church but cannot confide in the priest. During a fierce argument with her mother, she finally blurts out her secret.

A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to represent rape from the survivor’s perspective and to explore the life-threatening risks pregnancy posed in a society where abortion was both outlawed and taboo. With a narcotic musicality and voice scorched through with honesty, Gallardo hangs before us an experience that has been lived and ignored a thousand times over. Nefer closes her eyes. We careen to her and we see.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781953861641
Pages: 114
Publication Date:

Praise

A crystalline and tightly-wound story of a young woman's tenacious desire for her own freedom and the rigid, Catholic community that is unable to recognize her as a full human being. Elegant and forceful--I couldn't put it down.
—Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X

A writer of terrifying intelligence . . . Gallardo’s scorn for the paternalism of an economic system in which the rich control even the souls of the poor is understated but vicious . . . [Nefer's] world is striking for its isolation, which only grows when her family learns of her pregnancy. Lonelier than ever, Nefer begins for the first time to feel tenderly toward her fetus, who is, after all, her only “companion in a private world.” But the feeling passes; soon she is once again hoping to be rid of it. The reader holds her breath.
—S.C. Cornell, The New Yorker

The magnificent English-language debut from Argentine writer Gallardo (1931–1988), first published in 1958, portrays a 16-year-old girl’s dilemma after she gets pregnant... The subtle workings of the story cleverly mirror the characters’ euphemistic dialogue about pregnancy (a relative asks if Nefer’s recently married oldest sister is “in the family way”), and Gallardo’s restraint makes the occasional moments of swelling emotion even more powerful. This deserves to be a classic.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

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