CRYING WORDS

About the Book

Writing just for the sake of writing is worthless. You have to write when you are driven to bleed into the paper. ¿Cry? Yes, I would like to. But I don’t know how. I only know how to cry writing. Crying words in silence. Crying Words is an introspective monologue, a narrative that has something to say to everyone, and yet is intensely personal. A journey, an awakening, it is Manu Rodriguez' most intimate work to date. Each of us feels alienated at some point in our lives, and everyone knows what it is to cry, but if we were able to turn those tears into words, crying with ink onto the page, would our words find a kinship with the words, and tears, of another? A way to connect emotionally, through words? Deep down what are we really searching for? Wisdom? Money? Sex? Love? Inner peace? Perhaps these crying words will wash away the confusion of yesterday and carry us, sailing, into the future. Crying Words by Manu Rodriguez may answer some or all of these questions, it is certainly a frank and open account, an inner memoir, a journey; a journey which each of us must ultimately take, in some way, at some time... This book was published for the first time in Spain in 2005 and was translated into an English version by the author. Also included are four drawings by Chencho Aguilera, an artist from Ayamonte, Andalucia. Manu Rodriguez was born in Sevilla, Andalucía, in 1967 to a modest and traditional family. He is a Spanish author who also writes in English. In Spanish he has published ‘Leyendas Adolescentes (primeros cuentos de finales de siglo)’ (Castillejo, 1998), ‘Llorando palabras’ (Celya, 2005), ‘Manual de Escritura Curativa’ (Almuzara, 2010) y ‘La tía que quiero pasa de mí… Y tú riéndote (Dauro, 2013).

About the Author

Manu Rodriguez was born in Sevilla, Andalucía, in 1967, to a modest and traditional family. My mother was a primary school teacher and my father a policeman. I am the eldest of four brothers and a sister. This might sound like a regular story but the peculiarity is that my father´s father, and my mother´s father, were brothers. According to my maternal grandmother, who is still alive, they didn’t see anything wrong at all with the relationship or the later marriage of her daughter and the son of her brother in law. Then, my mum and dad got married very young and I was born about nine months later. Probably their first love… their first son. When I was two years old I got really sick. The doctors said I was not going to last very long. I’m forty seven now and I guess those doctors are probably dead by now. Sometimes fate plays such unpredictable games... I’ve had to learn how to live and accept my life with health problems, physical limitations and a label that society has for people like me: ‘disabled’. I can’t say it’s easy just because I’ve got used to it. In fact, some moments in late childhood and adolescence were the times I had the most difficulty relating to this label, other people and the world that surrounded me. In spite of my sickness, and with the encouragement of my parents, I finished my high school days and went to university, I worked in broadcasting, I became a writer... I wrote Crying Words at the end of the nineties. I can´t remember now when exactly I started or finished it. I wrote it in my mother tongue, Spanish, as a process of catharsis and healing, to spit out the pain and frustration I was suffering, in a city where I couldn’t find my own space or freedom. Now I can see how Crying Words marked the end of that period of my life. Soon after I wrote it, I left Sevilla and relocated to Edinburgh, Scotland...