Author Agustina Bazterrica, known for her books “Tender is the Flesh” and “The Unworthy,” came to the Cohen Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies on Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 4 p.m. to give her lecture “The Fiction of Warning.” After her presentation, she held a Q&A session and ended with a book signing.
Bazterrica’s presentation mainly focused on the topic of femicide, specifically Latin American femicides.
“I think that we have to resist by writing, by creating, by talking, by learning, by understanding every single day of our lives, because the fight never ends,” Bazterrica said in her presentation.
Bazterrica said that she had many female role models in her life who inspired her to become a writer.
“My grandmother was one of the first women to study economics at university,” she said in her presentation. “There were only two females in the class, and she was a widow very young, so she supported her four children alone. She was an amazing leader.”
“And my mother, she has a Ph.D, she’s a sociologist, and she’s one of the brightest readers I’ve ever met,” she added.
Bazterrica said that she feels literature is a “magic portal” that can transport readers and expand their worldview.
“You can talk to people that are in other countries, [you can] view the world in a different way,” she said in her presentation, “and that makes your reality get bigger and bigger and bigger.”
HGS Professor Lisa DiGiovanni said that she hopes attendees learned something from the presentation.
“I hope students took away a deeper appreciation for how fiction serves as a tool for ethical inquiry and critique,” she said. “Specifically, I hope they recognized how dystopian literature, through extreme scenarios, can force us to confront uncomfortable truths about our own society, the normalization of violence, and the mechanisms of ‘othering’ that can lead to mass atrocities.”
DiGiovanni said she believes that the lecture worked to continue Keene State’s academic message.
“Hosting this lecture reinforces Keene State’s commitment to intellectual engagement and social responsibility,” she said. “It brings a major international voice to our campus, enriching the academic environment and exposing students to diverse perspectives that challenge their worldview, which is central to a strong liberal arts education.”
The presentation was met with positivity. First-year Alec Rogers said that he came after reading “Tender is the Flesh.”
“I read the book last year and really enjoyed it, so I was really excited to see that she was going to be here,” he said.
Rogers said he found the presentation interesting.
“I thought it was very insightful,” he said. “I thought it touched on a lot of things.”
KSC alumna Megan Fritz said she also found the presentation enjoyable.
“It was just amazing to see the work that she put into it, writing it in Spanish and translating it to English, and the effort that she put into providing this for us in the U.S.,” she said.
Emily Sloane can be contacted at
esloane@kscequinox.com
