Elba Quintero

Vice President & Public Relations Manager

Elba is a Guadalajara-born, Berlin-based poet and photographer. Her work revolves around migration, feminism, mental health, inclusion, the experience of a conscious state, and the city of Berlin. She works as a copywriter in health tech.

You can find more of her work in Spanish at elbaquintero.com.

Tell us who you are in 3 book titles:

Elena Garro’s La semana de colores (The week of colours)

Magic realism is engraved in my neurons, mainly because it made a lot of sense when I was an adolescent, hoping that reality wasn't all that we had. Elena Garro's short stories from La semana de colores spoke to me in a traumatizing way: they opened up a beautiful world created by a woman, and somehow gave me permission to create my own. I was also confused by how heavily charged short stories could be, explaining so little and portraying so much beauty at the same time. 

Silvia Federici’s Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender, and Feminism

This book got me angry. And then we discussed it in a book club, and we got all angry. And then my mom read it and she also got angry. And now my journey within feminism got even way more personal than it was before. There are so many battles to fight against patriarchy and capitalism, and this book made me feel like I got one more weapon to use. 

Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diarios (Journals)

Poetry isn't something one can only write. Poetry is the hemoglobine feeding the oxygen to one's cells, it's the way our conscious states make sense of this fucked up reality, it's the lack of permission that we need to exist, it's our suffering served as a toasted irony to the infinity, it's sometimes our only way of survival. Poetry lived through Pizarnik and her journals are a palpable peregrination through her existence.