Fer Rivas: “I feel like I’ve betrayed my family by exposing their dirty laundry.”

BarcelonaDuring her childhood and adolescence, Fer Rivas (Barcelona, ​​1994) identified as male and was attracted to men. When she was in high school, her father died suddenly of a heart attack. For almost ten years, she kept her grief bottled up and buried in a corner of her heart, unable to cope. Literature was the tool to unblock it: Rivas poured everything she felt and had experienced into a letter to her father, written with honesty and courage, preceding her gender transition. Now that text has been converted into an autobiographical novel. I was a boy (Ángulo Editorial / Sexto Piso), and now Rivas is working to transform it into a play as well.

Why does the novel take the form of a letter to your father?

— I had initially written it in Spanish and in the third person, but I realized it wasn't working. I was hiding. I started again in the first person, addressing my father to recapture the idea of a conversation we'd never be able to have. Then it all came out: memories surfaced, and it took on the dimension of a letter.

To talk about dad, you first need to delve into the figure of grandparents. What did you discover?

— I had to understand the context of where my father came from. The issue of class emerged above all else. I realize that, in some way, class violence penetrates and seeps into the family nucleus and into intimate relationships. Sometimes we misinterpret violence because we only see it as a static element, when in reality it's dynamic: violence reproduces violence, even if it can skip a generation. In the book, I wanted to talk about that legacy and, at the same time, break with that reproduction of violence.

It reveals a series of facts that often remain within families, such as the fact that the grandmother practically never left the house because the grandfather prevented her from doing so, or the desire of the men in the family to hide their working-class origins.

— I feel like I've betrayed my family by exposing their dirty laundry. I've broken with this traditional idea that what happens at home, stays at home. My surroundings tell me: "What need did you have to share these things?" But I think we need to start breaking with this opacity. The family is still a micro-society; what happens inside is what we later encounter in the outside world. If we don't manage it, it ends up having social repercussions. There are many of us trying to build a world that is less hostile, kinder, more flexible, and more fluid, and that allows us all to inhabit it, breaking with the rigidity of the norm.

During his time at high school, the protagonist of the book lives in fear and at the same time fascinated by his classmates. Is his memory of adolescence what we read in the book?

— To a large extent, yes. It was a very dark time, filled with insecurities, having no role models, and no ability to construct a narrative. I felt very alone. Until I was 15 or 16, I believed that what was happening to me didn't happen to anyone else. I felt like no narrative included me, as if the world wasn't waiting for me at any moment. I've always been a outsider I've been harassed by my family and have received a lot of abuse for not following the rules, but this has allowed me to see things from a distance. At first, I was uncomfortable and angry, thinking, "Why do I always have to be the one leading the way?" But now I've come to terms with this.

Adolescence is a dark time, but it is also the time when desire appears.

— There was no room for desire in my home. As a class issue, the important thing was to be productive, to earn money, to work. Everything was focused on the possibility of advancement, of being a different kind of family.

When this desire begins to take shape, Dad is in the hospital, having just had a heart attack. Why do you contrast these two experiences?

— I confront desire precisely with the image of my father in a coma, because at that moment, his body was exposed in an unusual way, with a different kind of intimacy. I wanted to generate that discomfort, which, in a way, was how desire was constructed in me. I remember very well that when I discovered masturbation, the image of my father constantly appeared to me. I linked him to punishment and guilt.

When the father dies, the first sensation the protagonist experiences is a great liberation.

— I begin to feel free when my father figure disappears, but this is accompanied by a lot of guilt. My family was told that my father was wonderful, charismatic, a good teacher, a good principal, and a good father. I loved him, but I couldn't grieve unless I constructed a narrative about what we had both experienced. It took ten years after his death before I was able to confront them and grieve.

The entire book is written with a male narrator, but you identify with feminine pronouns. Why did you make that formal decision?

— When I started writing the novel, four years ago, I identified as a man. I began transitioning just as the opportunity to publish it arose, and I considered changing the gender of the narrator. But then I thought that for 28 years of my life I've identified as a man and constructed myself as such, and this story is told from that perspective. Sometimes trans narratives are constructed from the perspective of a single identity, based on the idea that we were born in the wrong body. I completely disagree. My identity is cumulative; it's not unique and exclusive. I was a boy, I was a gay man, and now I'm a trans woman. All of this shapes the person I am.