Un sabor en cada lenguaje. Apropiaciones japonesas en Umami de Laia Jufresa

Abstract

The cultural and narrative presence of Japan in Mexican territory dates back
some decades, let us remember the work of authors such as José Juan Tablada
and Octavio Paz linking their style to Japanese literature, essentially to haiku.
However, the interest in Japanese aesthetics has ceased to be situated in
structural models and it is notable that in contemporary Mexican narrative a
link has been established with the Japanese as a space that allows thematic
and structural transgression, proof of this is found in the literary work of Mario
Bellatin, Antonio Ortuño, Álvaro Enrigue and, in an irruptive way, in the writer Laia
Jufresa (Mexico City, 1983) on whom this text focuses.
The work of the Mexican author is relatively new, an adjective that prevails
throughout her first novel Umami (2015). This article deals with various examples
of the interrelation between the linguistic and the affective that Jufresa uses to
create new signifiers. The linguistic imagery of the narrator of this novel comes
from her vague interaction with the Japanese, which in a positive way allows her
to create a new and expansive linguistic universe.