The earth awaits. Dolores Reyes and her poetics of resilience

Abstract

After the publication of the novel Cometierra in 2019, the author Dolores Reyes was quickly positioned by critics as another interlocutor in the current literary field in which a generation of writers (Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Selva Almada, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez) managed to positively lead a discussion about literary genres, aesthetic vocabularies and imaginary categories. In 2023, Dolores Reyes published the novel Miseria, a continuation of Cometierra, with which she deepened both her poetic narrative and her voice in the literary field. The objective of this paper is to read Cometierra as a novel in which violence against women and resilience configure the basic plot of fiction, in which common sense and countercommon sense make visible the exactive network of the feminine. To illuminate this, we will articulate the concept of resilience with the polarizing categories of historical genres, where care, memory, the value of the land and rootedness can be forms of human resistance, in so many de-essentialized but not pasteurized practices.