Nefando, by Mónica Ojeda Franco. Childhood’s voice is low and its vocabulary, imprecise: Writing, disturbing, saying the unspeakable

Abstract

The novel by Ecuadorian writer Mónica Ojeda, Nefando (2016), centers its interest in reflecting upon the possibilities of naming and narrating extreme corporal experiences when it comes to a damaged childhood. It is also interesting to recognize a line of thought around childhood in the novel, as well as violence and pain suffered by others. Writing, disturbing, showing the obscene are verbs that meet in the horizon of a semantic field that seeks to put in crisis the assumptions adopted with respect to childhood and family. The writing of Nefando is activated by the question of how to say what cannot be said.