January is the perfect month to curl up at home with tea and a book – you won’t spend money on silly sale items and you won’t catch the flu, according to one of those cheesy free newspapers. If you saw the picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover of El País the other day, you know why the book should be Inés García-Albi’s Nosotras que contamos (Plaza & Janés.)
Including Carmen de Burgos, aka Colombine, who became a journalist in1901 in part to support her daughter and María Eugenia Alberdi who turned a crafts magazine into a magazine for women coming of age in the post-Franco era, Nosotras que contamos narrates the history of Spain in the last century through the anecdotes of the women who fought their way to being allowed to report it.
While the book started as a collection of interviews, the author found the women’s stories so compelling that she kept going, using over 50 interviews to complete the picture of women in Spanish journalism in the last century. García-Albi, an experienced journalist (and my friend, but that's got nothing to do with anything,) who’s worked with El País and Canal + among others, says that even she reads the newspaper differently after writing the book. That’s why, when you see a picture of a crazy lady on the front page of a newspaper, you have to ask yourself just who put that picture there.
Including Carmen de Burgos, aka Colombine, who became a journalist in1901 in part to support her daughter and María Eugenia Alberdi who turned a crafts magazine into a magazine for women coming of age in the post-Franco era, Nosotras que contamos narrates the history of Spain in the last century through the anecdotes of the women who fought their way to being allowed to report it.
While the book started as a collection of interviews, the author found the women’s stories so compelling that she kept going, using over 50 interviews to complete the picture of women in Spanish journalism in the last century. García-Albi, an experienced journalist (and my friend, but that's got nothing to do with anything,) who’s worked with El País and Canal + among others, says that even she reads the newspaper differently after writing the book. That’s why, when you see a picture of a crazy lady on the front page of a newspaper, you have to ask yourself just who put that picture there.
