She is a journalist and published her chronicles in the magazine of a daily newspaper, which depict the various stages of her life, throughout her 40 years of age in an alley in the Orangery, in the city Funchal.
What led you to write about your childhood in a city like Funchal?
Marta Caires: These things do not happen from one day to another. When I started writing it was October, we were at the height of "Bread for God," I saw everything with images of Halloween and thought it was time, it was not our tradition, it was something imported and started there. Gradually, without realizing it, I comprehended it was what readers wanted to know, what I felt, what I had seen, from the perspective of memory, of nostalgia, of which no longer existed and was just in our heads. People wanted their past, their history and somehow I cannot explain, because these things do not have a logical explanation, I discovered that it was my voice and a lot of people, maybe several, because before the time did not run as fast as today. There are several generations of islanders who have the same experiences, everyone had an alley, a heath, a mother and father and then it all turned into a book.
Yes, but how you got this feedback from people? How you realize that's what the readers wanted given that it is a daily newspaper?
MC: It was also what I wanted, it was not just what readers wanted. I ventured, reaching the hearts of people do not know how and touched them. Today we live in a time where there is no past and this is not good. To be well you need to know where you come from and what people need to remember, because it was a past that was not bad, nor sad, nor ugly, had not been rich, nor flourish, or full of stuff, but it was a good one, this was the life that people had lived and it was very important.
Did you felt any doubts, because you were exposing what you felt?
MC: It is very important that we should all do that, we can only talk about what we know, we can only write about it and then I lay the part that is public. Your life will also have similar things to the next door neighbor, people say that to me, it looks like I grew up with it, I've lived in the Orangery. It's a kind of place where everybody lived. Do not think it's anything too revealing or intimate, we were not rich, but they all had this kind of problems.
One of the people who speak more is your mother, you approach the discussions, your generational differences. What does she tell you about it?
MC: The book is dedicated to the memory of my mother. When I started writing she had been dead for ten years. Was about my mother, it was like bringing her back alive and I not know what she would think about. But, what I write, I owe to her, having arrive here.
Your brother and your father what to they think?
MC: My father has always been a great support and my brother also, incidentally he helped me make the selection of the chronics.
Or are intimidated by the fact that you talk about them?
MC: No, as they say, no one knows who they are, are almost like characters.
What was the common thread in the selection of this chronicles? Have immense and diverse temporal spaces there.
MC: Try to be covered several times, that depicted the time, my last 40 years. Has several moments, childhood, adolescence, places, people, and what I thought about the future and Lisbon which was also an important step of my life.
Which of the chronic is your favorite?
MC: I do not know what to tell you, there are some that I like, there are ones that make cry, there are others that make me want to laugh.
And what is the best describes you when you were younger? Although there is always a bit of you in all of them.
MC: The chronicles of my adolescence when I'm in high school and at the university in Lisbon. That's me, the adventure, when I decided to do this, but I'm there in all of them, we do not change that much, we are who we are from kids, time perfects just who we are.
