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Undiscovered: A Novel

GABRIELA WIENER

"The huacos are called that because they were found in sacred temples called huacas, buried alongside important people. (...) But of all the huacos, the huaco retrato is the most interesting. A huaco retrato is the pre-Hispanic passport photo. The image of an indigenous face so realistic that looking at it is for many like looking in the broken mirror of the centuries."

"My brown, chola and sudaca identity tries to disguise the Wiener that I carry within me."

GABRIELA WIENER

"Since I was little, I knew I came from two very different worlds, that of the Wiener and that of the Bravo, even though both surnames somewhat summoned triumph and applause. Both families had relatively humble origins, but in Lima, it is very different being poor with ancestors from Áncash or Monsefú than being poor with European ancestors."

GABRIELA WIENER

"My grandmother, my Mom's mother, called my father, her daughter's husband, Don, because she was not white, but Chola. I found it very strange to hear my grandmother treat my father with this excessive and undeserved respect. 'Don Raúl' was my father."

GABRIELA WIENER

"One day, you woke up in Paris and dressed like these people and went out with your huaco retrato face, like mine, and walked on the Sena bridges, as if you were my twin lost in time. From there, you saw the birth of the 20th century, this century in which white Europeans killed other white Europeans for not being white enough, and finally the genocide was called genocide. What could you expect for yourself?"

GABRIELA WIENER

These are loose translation from the Portuguese version "Exploração"

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