In literature, the order of the factors irremediably alters the product, a recurring phrase in my writings, a postulate that is flagrantly verified in this anthology, this compilation ordered by the young and wise gaze of Ana Negri, who has brought together several of my essays from new and enlightened way.

Throughout my work, I have been concerned with recovering bodies, that of Malinche, the language or interpreter of Cortés during the conquest of Mexico; that of Santa, the prostitute who is the protagonist of the novel of the same name by Federico Gamboa, sold piecemeal as cow meat was sold in butcher shops; the body of the mutilated in India; that of those murdered and cremated in the extermination camps; that of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, her muses and the Virgin Mary; the martyred body of the saints and the scourged of the nuns; the battered, vexed, shaken body of Don Quixote and the crippled hand of Cervantes; the body turned to stone of Pedro Páramo; the bodies of those who suffer gender violence; that of suicides and, last but not least, the erotic body, the sick, aged or bloodless body.

I privilege the fragment in textuality: it is my work tool. But I also fragment the bodies to look at them better, as the wolf told Little Red Riding Hood. In short, I work with the fragment as mosaics are assembled, a work made with tesserae, that is, with pieces of stone, ceramic or glass, of different shapes and colors, to form geometric or figurative compositions, whose themes can range from mythology to Scenes from everyday life.

MARGO GLANTZ

Margo Glantz's essays have opened channels through which authors, works and traditions intersect and dialogue; essays that, like veins and arteries, trace the intricate journey of a writing always ready for new reflections, erasures and diversions. In order not to hurt that organism that the author had been articulating by herself and over the years, I decided to concentrate on the third section that she had planned: essays that revolve around the theme of the body.

ANA BLACK