Backstory Talks: Yásnaya Elena A. Gil, linguist and Indigenous rights activist

We are deeply honored to welcome linguist, writer, and activist Yásnaya Elena A. Gil to Backstory Bookshop as part of her residency in Barcelona with the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). Her visit is made possible through the CCCB’s international residency programme, organized in collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and with the support of the Fundació Privada Mir-Puig.

Her work powerfully defends linguistic diversity as an act of resistance and a vision for the future. During her visit to Backstory she will discuss her newly translated book, This Mouth Is Mine (Charco Press, 2024). In this remarkable collection, she explores how every language carries a unique worldview — and how its disappearance is never neutral, but a form of violence that erases memory, identity, and possibility.

Together, we’ll reflect on what is lost when a language fades, what can still be preserved, and why listening — truly listening — might be one of the most radical acts of all. The conversation will be guided by Valerie Miles—writer, editor, translator, and co-founder of Granta en español—who will help us explore Yásnaya’s work, the politics of language, and what is at stake when a language is silenced.

The conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

### About the Speakers

Born in Ayutla, in the Mexican region of Oaxaca, Yásnaya Elena A. Gil is a linguist, writer, translator, and human rights activist. Her work centers on linguistic diversity, Indigenous rights, and the politics of language. She writes regularly for major media outlets in Mexico and is recognized internationally for her contributions to discussions on decolonization, language preservation, and cultural identity. She is currently a resident at the CCCB’s international residency programme, organized in collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and supported by the Fundació Privada Mir-Puig.

She is currently in residence in Barcelona through the CCCB’s international programme, which invites leading figures in culture and thought to develop new work while building connections with the city’s creative and intellectual communities.

Valerie Miles is an American writer, editor, translator, and scholar based in Barcelona. She co-founded and directs Granta en español, advises the Prado Museum’s Writing the Prado fellowship, and has worked extensively to bridge Spanish, Latin American, and English-language literatures. Her work on the Roberto Bolaño archive led to the landmark exhibition at the CCCB, and her writing has appeared in outlets such as The New Yorker, La Vanguardia, and The Paris Review.

About the book
In This Mouth Is Mine (Charco Press, 2024. Translated by Ellen Jones), Yásnaya Elena A. Gil argues that every language is an irreplaceable way of seeing and inhabiting the world. Drawing on her experiences as a speaker of Mixe, she shows how language connects memory with the land and how its disappearance fractures entire communities. Preserving linguistic diversity, she insists, is not nostalgia — it’s an act of imagination and survival.