Co-founder of the feminist bookstore l’Euguélionne, professor and author, Karine Rosso offers with Between the island and the turtle a daring observation notebook, written in the “you” addressed to oneself.
A hybrid text, between autofiction and social reflection, it explores the role of literature in times of crisis, through an intimate correspondence with itself in the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlighting the tension between the intimate and the common, the author raises an essential question: to what extent can words transform the social and economic realities she observes around her?
From her apartment at the intersection of Milton Street and Parc Avenue in Montreal, she is saddened by the growing number of homeless people who populate the street corner. Her neighborhood becomes an “observatory of social fracture.” At the same time, an illness. Gradually, the narrator’s vision deteriorates and a disorder sets in.
This gaze is coupled with an introspective dimension: the narrator resumes writing travel stories started 20 years earlier, linking past and present, thus exploring social mobility and personal evolution. The travel stories – from Guatemala to Brazil – insert flashes of light into the uncertainty of daily pandemic life, but also echo the Montreal problems that she observes. This duality creates an interesting dynamic and her travels to the South nourish her reflections on the writing of the other. By what right does she write about these people less privileged than she? The answer is not clear, but the exploration of the question is fascinating.
Between the island and the turtle
Triptych
186 pages