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Unexpectedly, against all odds, the book that has made the most impact on me in my life was ... a comic.

Specifically, the graphic novel

'Can we talk about something nicer?'

by

Roz Chast,

published by Reservoir Gráfica a few years ago.

The experience was so intense that I shared it with my sisters and my closest friends, who had very similar impressions to mine when reading the book.

What is it about?

To grow old.

And cruelty.

And compassion.

The fact is that we all have such a book in life.

It can be that novel or that essay or that comic that has made you understand something crucial about yourself, or discover a vocation, or see the world with different eyes.

A book after reading which you are no longer the same person.

Or more you than ever.

With morbid curiosity I wanted to know which were the books that also forever marked the lives of very diverse women in the world of culture, which have made them who they ended up being, personally and professionally.

The actresses

Vicky Luengo, Nata Moreno and Ana Rayo,

the presenter

Alba Lago,

the editors

Ymelda Navajo

and

Ofelia Grande

, the writers

Espido Freire

and Mayte Uceda, the singer

Brisa Fenoy

and the choreographer

Teresa Nieto

have told us about it.

ESPIDO FREIRE, WRITER

"

'The second sex',

by

Simone de Beauvoir.

I was 16 years old and we had a chapter as a reading in the Philosophy subject. I got hold of both parts and devoured them. It was the first time that I had found the feminist thought systematized until then I knew in a scattered and uncoordinated way. It marked my gaze on the literature written by women, the search for references and the authenticity of my own voice. And it triggered my interest in essays, a genre that I have also cultivated ".

Ymelda Navajo.

Editor of The Sphere of Books

"Although there are many books that have influenced my life since I started reading, there is one especially that changed my way of seeing the world. It is

'A room of my own',

by

Virginia Woolf,

that fell into my hands in my early youth, in the 70s. This work, which saw the light in England in 1929, gave me a new perspective on the conditions in which women have been able to dedicate themselves to writing throughout the history.

He taught me the importance that education and economic independence have had so that we have not been able to exercise our work in freedom.

And I also understood through its pages the reasons for the absence of women in history, art and literature where they have always appeared as stereotypes and not as real characters.

Woolf was a woman ahead of her time and had a great influence on an entire generation of women. "

Ana Rayo.

Actress

(Until October 30 at the Spanish Theater with the monologue 'Despierta').

I would tell you two books. One

'Fear of freedom',

by

Erich Fromm

, which completely changed my perspective of what it is to be free and allowed me to understand why people are capable of voting for authoritarian parties. The book describes why the Germans voted for

Hitler

. Another book that also changed my life (I can't say just one!) Was

'Women who run with the wolves',

by the psychoanalyst

Clarissa Pinkola Estés,

that reviews the stories of a lifetime.

The author goes to the origins of each story and makes a psychoanalytic interpretation of them, especially of the female archetypes.

This book changed my life, I have given it 10 or 15 times, I have read it many, and surely I will read it again shortly.

Every time I do it I identify with a different story and it changes the perspective of my own life.

Ophelia Grande.

Director of the Siruela publishing house

"I choose

'In Cold Blood'

, by

Truman Capote.

Because reading it at the age of 16 or 17 I discovered that there was another way of doing literature, a way of telling that I still did not know. And because it aroused in me a fascination for literature ' black 'and, especially, for the' true crime 'that I still have today. "

Alba Lake.

Journalist, presenter in Telecinco News

'Rebels',

by

Susan E. Hinton.

I do not know exactly what it produced in me, only that it was part of my transition from girl to woman, from childhood to adolescence, my first adult book.

I was 12 years old and that story of two rival gangs hid the purest feelings and values ​​of the human being: anger, love, loyalty ... I think they also made the film, a luxury cast with

Tom Cruise

as the head of the cast .

I didn't want to see it.

The protagonists had become my friends in the neighborhood, I was happy and I cried for them.

I have to read it again.

Nata Moreno.

Director, producer, actress and playwright

"It is not an easy question. I am a great reader, and the truth is that there are many books that have touched my heart. But if I get romantic I have to say that there is a very symbolic one, not so much because of the greatness of the book, that of course it does, but because of what it meant in me as the key to daring myself to create, to write. It is

'Wuthering Heights'

by

Emily Brontë.

The book was published in 1847 and she died in '48, at the age of 30. Almost all the time he wrote secretly and with a pseudonym, so when I read the novel it made me think a lot about the permission that this woman had given herself and somehow led me to give myself permission to do so, a long time later and with more freedom. , dare to create ".

Vicky Luengo.

Actress

(On October 29 he premieres 'El substitute', a thriller directed by Óscar Aibar who co-stars with Ricardo Gómez)

"I would not know how to choose a single book, but when I discovered the literature of

Annie Ernaux

('The Years', 'The Place')

I was deeply impressed and moved. She is one of the great pioneers of autofiction and through her I found

Delphine de Vigan ('The loyalties', 'The gratitudes'),

another of my favorite authors ".

Teresa Nieto.

Choreographer

"Not one, but two books have changed my perception of the world throughout my life. At the age of 12,

'East Wind, West Wind'

by

Pearl S. Buck

fell into my hands

. It marked my passage from children's literature to the 'older', the passage from adolescence to youth. Over the years, the reading of

'Lost Steps'

by

Alejo Carpentier,

had a great impact on me and I have always had the feeling that it led to my transition from youth to maturity ".

Breeze Fenoy.

Songwriter and singer

"Without a doubt,

'From codependency to freedom. Face to face with fear',

by

Krishnananda

. It has changed my life because since I read it I have begun to BE, from my freedom of choice, of the life I want to choose and the life that I deserve to live; not from lack or from attachment, nor from demands or rush or expectations, but from the freedom to flow, to feel. To be able to decide the life I want and the people I want. , and above all to achieve the peace of mind that I deserve ".

Mayte Uceda, writer

"The work that has marked me the most has been

'The Night Trilogy',

by

Elie Wiesel

(Nobel Peace Prize 1986), especially the first part entitled 'The night', where the author recounts his experience and that of his father in Auschwitz. I was very young, perhaps too young, when this book fell into my hands, and I have to admit that it shocked me and opened my eyes to the true nature of people. I remember that my head hung around me for a long time, I couldn't forget what I had read. He had seen movies about World War II, but would never have imagined something so cruel. This book represented a before and after in my way of seeing the world, it took away my faith in the human being, made me mature in a certain aspect, and showed me terrifying evidence: even the most civilized society is capable of carrying out the greatest of atrocities.Added to this aspect in the book was the sincerity with which Wiesel narrates his experience, declaring that he wished the death of his beloved father because it was a burden for him, because it reduced his chances of survival. The words of a Kapo from the concentration camp to young Elie stuck with me: “There is no worthy father here, no brother, no friend. Each one lives and dies for himself, alone. "

ROSA FERRÉ.

Artistic director of Matadero Madrid

"The first time I had the consciousness of living an aesthetic experience was reading

'The Wind in the Willows',

at the age of six or seven.

Kenneth Grahame

He wrote this novel from the bedtime stories he told his son, and it has become a classic in British children's literature. The Spanish edition that I had as a child was a beautiful book, with magnificent illustrations that I didn't pay much attention to. I saw the English countryside through words and was struck by the beauty of the enormous variety of things. I still remember as if I had read yesterday the ride of the Mole in a boat. I see the wet hair of the mole, how the surface of the lake sparkled, everything was of a beauty and tranquility typical of the passing of a different time. It was like having access to another world, the world of the little things that are there, in nature. And a pleasant time, closed in on itself. There I discovered the power of literature to make you happy ".

Magüi Look.

Theater director and actress

"It was

'El Capital',

by

Carlos Marx.

I was in bed with tonsils and my father put it in my hands. I was fifteen years old. And I read it at once and it went through me so much that when I got to college, full dictatorship, I wanted to enroll in a course in socialism. Great naivety. Little by little I have been discovering what the word utopia means, but I retain enough hope to believe that life will be fairer and that the economic and social order will generate less suffering ".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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