“I will spend a day cleaning”, María Agúndez writes (Zaragoza, 1990) on the first page, also in the first sentence, “Clean Houses” (Today’s songs), a novel that looks at what almost no one wants to see to portray what no one wants to do with perverted humor. Put wax, Polish wax and get entangled in all imaginable derivatives of domestic capitalism. “On Tuesday I make general clean “Pools that do not cover”.
Only who cleans or thinks about cleaning is not so much but Sun, The protagonist of the novel, who comes to the crown of continuous dripping of fictions related to cleaners and household workers. Books, series and movies It really does not come from homework, but from survival, uncertainty and class struggle. Or fight for dry. “The relationship between men and servants fascinates and frightens in the same parts for its ambivalence, between distance and intimacy, between harmony and violence, between loyalty and rebellion,” writes Alizéeeeelpierre in ‘Serve rich ‘ (Peninsula), one of the essays of the season and revealing dive in low funds of the dynamics of power and domestic burden.
María Agúndez, author “Clean Casas” / EPC
Social reconquests
In it, a French researcher speaks of “ceremony”, Claude Chabrol, about the Oscar -“Parasitos”, and the social ranks “Downton Abbey”. From “Diario de and waitress”, “simple heart” and “eugenia grandet”. Mirbeau, Flaubert and Balzac are opened by Boca and “Renata without further fuss” by Catherina Guérard and “Maids” Jean Genet to enter the subject. The home classic of the last century, which are regularly renewed by new titles and news that is increasingly adapting to the times of social disputes and reconquests. “What is the meaning of a society in which you need to free yourself from the most important tasks, in a literal and pictorial sense, and be served by poor, immigrants and women?” Delpierre asks. Answer if can be found in frames ‘Invisible’, The series that led to a small screen is the hotel waitresses (“No one sees them, we all need them,” said the promotional slogan) or as a result ‘Rome ‘, Alfonso Cuaron, which helped to make the uncertainty and presentation of household employees visible.
“One day, for dinner with friends, I don’t know how it finally spoke that in the couples who had an assistant, they only had their phone number. One of them did not know or what it was called its cleaning products,” recalls Agúndez. In this way, a novel that Diana makes in several major contradictions (are progressiveism and domestic services compatible? Are there uncertain work better than others?
Because the protagonist “Clean Houses”, The first and girl’s mother for everything under the order of the artist is moving from “having” two cleaning girls to become a domestic employee. Improbable? Maybe not so much. “It does almost out of emotional necessity. We will see that Aunt is a drink, it is almost a solution to her mood. However, its social environment does not correspond to it: If you are Sarrià, you can only do a job that corresponds to the neighborhood of Sarrià,” Agúndez reflects.
Covered with “pure houses” and “serve the rich” / EPC
Coexist with the powerful
In previous periods writer and journalist Anna Pacheco He infiltrated Barcelona’s luxury tourism to get to know the working conditions of cleaner and waitresses and condemned them in “I was here and remembered us”; Ana Geranios noticed that “Summer without vacation. The daughter of Costa del sol ‘ as hospitality staff in tourist sites; and Beatriz Navarro Has rolled over in the book of poemsWet floors’ Your experience as cleaners. “Cleaning is a defective service / it takes too little to do what it costs / once someone uses it, it’s not worth anything,” writes.
At one end, Marie Kondo. In the second, real life. “I worked as cleaners in hotels and see the eyes of servants: ignored people who coexisted with powerful,” he explained during a promotional tour ‘Marital portrait’ Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell. “That fed me as a writer because they let you enter the intimacy area in which no one is entering the street but a cleaning woman Eva Baltasarwhose latest novel “Ocàs and Fascinacii” played a woman who will end up cleaning houses and in which the author “Permagel” overturned some of her experience as a cleaner.
Then there is a tongue; Because “mamis” talks about the workers: I have it at home, I leave it, I give you it … they are like using a home “
In “Clean”, Chilean Alia Trabucco Zerán It is installed in a gap that separates domestic employees and a high -class family for which it works visibility, never better said, invisibility of carers and home employees. “It is necessary to question who they have and had the right to increase their voice and who is not. And what happens when some objects that were used to bend their voice,” explained the writer, finalist of the International Booker 2015 with “subtraction” during promotion of the novel.
Back on “Clean Houses”, Another dilemma: the relationship between employers and employees. Or, as the promotional belt announces with a large rumble “What if they don’t want to be” like a family “?” The answer in this case is Roxana, a Paraguay caregiver who closes the book by a blow of masterpiece. “People are very offended when the assistant” leaves “them. With everything they have done for her, and there are some characters in the book that has this perverted energy, ”explains Agúndez. Sitting it, but of course it is.”
Heroines
Another cleaner, a single mother who saw life Margaret Qualley In the series “La Assista” (adaptation of the book “Maid” by Stephanie Land), a few years ago caused a feeling in Netflix; While the American Freida McFadden It revolutionizes the middle world bookstores with thrillers starring Millie Calloway, a past girl who was throwing a murky “reborn” as a domestic employee. “I am excited about the idea that someone is vulnerable to take the reins of their situations and becomes a hero,” he relativized the author “assistant”, “the secrets of the assistant” and “the assistant follows you in a recent interview”.
Little or nothing to do with Diana and Emily, two “girls” who “help” the sun in “Clean Casas”, but not everything will be a social critic and condemn. Or maybe yes. “To cleanse the living room, I start with a bookstore that is huge that seems to be measured. I pass on dust for every module for each module and quickly read some titles written on the shoulder when I find small paper, a fresh ink announcement saying,” Agúndez writes. Show that, Jeeves.
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