The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Review by Han Clark
In her Booker International Prize 2020 shortlisted novel, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara reworks, with a feminist and LGBT slant, a classic of Argentinian historical literature
There is a growing demand for female retelling of narratives that have traditionally existed only in the male sphere. The 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction was dominated by a list of works which embraced the demand for the reclamation of women’s histories in pivotal historical and social moments of change. The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezon Camara sits alongside these brave proclamations of female visibility and versatility as a revolutionary retelling of the gaucho epic: Martin Fierro by Jose Hernandez.
Set in 1872, the year of Hernandez’s poem’s publication, The Adventures of China Iron is a bracing tale of friendship, self-discovery, and sexual awakening - all deeply entwined within the cultural history and natural world of the pampas of Argentina.
There is a hallucinatory quality to this landscape, its shifting colours and textures. The translation, by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre, is thoughtful and meditative, and although I have not read the original text, it seems to me that they have done an exceptional job of bringing the earth, and all that dwells within it, to life, often having to describe flora and fauna which is unique to Argentina, and having to convey the cultural subtext that the geographical and horticultural elements of the novel contain.
It is worth knowing that ‘China’ is pronounced ‘Cheena’. In the translators’ note at the end of the book, it says: ‘China posed a particular problem, since the word variously means girl, woman, wife, or servant, carrying strong racial and class connotations, yet it is also (when capitalised) the name of the heroine herself, despite not really being an individual name.’
Throughout the novel, China Iron has a variety of names given to her, but she was ‘born an orphan, if such a thing is possible’. Raised by an abusive couple with no children of their own, and lost during a game of cards, China is married off to the famous gaucho, Martin Fierro, before her thirteenth birthday and bears him two sons in quick succession. Although this is a horrific personal backstory for the protagonist and could potentially sequester a large portion of the novel, it is glossed over with haste and compassion; this is the true beauty of The Adventures of China Iron. It meets the sharp edges of life with acceptance and good humour, choosing to revel not in the tragedy of a person, nor the colonisation of a nation, but in the consistent beauty of those who choose to seek freedom in whatever small way they can find it.
China’s brief recounting of her childhood and adolescence is framed alongside her discovery of her freedom in the wake of her husband’s conscription and her adoption of a puppy, Estreya (which means ‘star’) who becomes a central character of the novel, and her befriending of Liz.
Liz, a Scottish woman on a quest to find her own lost husband, arrives in China’s life riding in a wagon filled with untold treasures and paths to escapism in the form of books and scientific artefacts. She is something of a ‘Mary Poppins’ character: exotic, practical, kind, and versed in all manner of things which China (who Liz names ‘Josephine’) is desperate to learn. Through Liz, China is able to explore her own intellect and discover the world, and herself. ‘I took off my dress and the petticoats and I put on the Englishman's breeches and shirt. I put on his neckerchief and asked Liz to take the scissors and cut my hair short. My plait fell to the ground and there I was, a young lad. Good boy she said to me, then pulled my face towards her and kissed me on the mouth.’
China and Liz’s sexual chemistry is laced within the wider narrative of the story, giving their budding relationship a generous and understated authenticity that blends seamlessly with the novel’s rich and varied depictions of flora and fauna.
‘Entwined in our burgeoning love we laughed at old fears of being abandoned, of being defeated, of falling to the ground without the strength to get back up, stuck to the ground and left at the mercy of the caranchos, of being reduced to what we are: a structure of bones and minerals, like stones.’
It is this deft blending of the emotional with the practical, the brutally honest with the softly compassionate, and the culturally authentic with the universal truths of human nature, which render this book so refreshing. It is a work of feminist, gender-queer fiction, that refuses to allow itself to become bogged down in the depressive reality and brutality of the patriarchy, rather it busies itself with the lives, and loves of the two women at the story’s heart. Full of both dry and black humour, The Adventures of China Iron is a novel that speaks of the human experience convincingly and with great courage throughout.
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre) is published 14/10/19