Ch'aska Eugenia Anka Ninawaman

Ch'aska Eugenia Anka Ninawaman

I am a Quechua woman of the K’ana nation, from the Ch’isikata community, Yauri-Espinar province, Cuzco-Peru. The night I was born, three Eminences burst into the hut: Tata Qurupuna, the most powerful snowcapped mountain in my region, Grandmother Hap’achi, a weaving force and guardian of my people, and Apu Torre Waychu, a poet and singer. They shook their condor wings and infused their powers in the occipital-lagoon of my small head. Tata gave me his storyteller key; Grandmother, the resplendent-illa of her threads, and the poet-singer enchanted my vocal cords with a little antarita–pan flute. When the ceremony was over, the guardian of flavor appeared, great-aunt Añas–skunk, who handed me her clay pot. Since then, these four breaths inhabit me and entrap me.

My father was a coca-camayuq, the elder in charge of distributing coca leaves in ritual ceremonies in honor of the Eminences. My brothers and I always accompanied him, and thus I was imbued with the stories that were told in those parts about the owners of the waterfalls, springs, streams, and hills. Upon returning from those trips, my knapsack was overflowing with tales; my mother, an expert weaver-storyteller and now an illustrator and writer, helped me to string them back together in the moonlight. “Imallayki-hayk’allayki / de-kernal your little stories,” she told me.

One day “Raqaq!”, the bullets exploded in my territory, the war for our land had begun. The springs, the hills, and the ravines had been ceded by the State to the mining companies. “You are the eye of the water that seeks its own channel”, I said to myself before leaving my land at the age of seven. I worked as a child maid in the city of Arequipa and my wings were clipped for another seven years, but the breath of my auntie-skunk arrived and made my clay pot become more and more succulent.

“Ignorant chola-Indian, condor legs”, insults like this, launched by my employers, led me to chart a new path and I made myself an oath: “I will learn to read and write”. Since then, singing and dreaming, I began to visit towns and cities so that, continuing to work, I could assimilate the ability to read and to write. Flying and Flying, I received my bachelor’s degree in Languages and Literatures; flying and flying I earned a Master’s degree in Anthropology; flying and flying I was awarded a PhD in Social Sciences.

But in truth, the breaths that entrap me are my songs and my poems, my weaver’s hands also work warps and wefts, and also draw. Flying and flying I have published poetry collections in Quechua-Spanish Tikachumpicha (Ed. Abya-Yala, 2012) and Ch’askaschay (Ed. Abya-yala, 2014); also the poetry collection written in high-altitude Andean Quechua K’ana Taqi mama (Ed. Inc, Cusco, 2015). Flying and flying my first book of short stories based on the Quechua oral tradition was published in a trilingual (Quechua-French-Spanish) edition, Viejito pero bien mañoso. Flying and flying my second Pájaros enamorados y galantes and third Ch’askaschaq mumurmure (Ed. L’Harmattan, 2021) trilingual books appeared.

Imallayki-hayk’allayki, says the storyteller, “Qiww” my small condor-son replies. And together we take flight over cities and ravines until re reach the Eminences.

Extras:Interview with Anka Ninawaman on Radio France Internacionale (March 4, 2020)

EInterview with Anka Ninawaman on Radio France Internacionale (May 6, 2021), on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Les murmures de Ch'askascha: Ch'askaschaq chhururuychan - Los murmullos de Ch'askascha (Editions L'Harmattan, 2021).