The Book is Written as a Spell: A Q&A with Rios de la Luz & Maria Esquinca
“De la Luz has written a book full of wonder, magic, joy, and horror. Surprisingly, the most horrible things in this fantasy novella are ricochets of the ‘real’ world.” — Maria Esquinca, on Itzá.
Read Maria Esquinca’s review of Itzá, by Rios de la Luz, at Anomaly.
Maria Esquinca: The abuelas in your new novella, Itzá, are both very strong, resilient, unapologetic women, while Marisol’s mom ends up becoming the opposite of that. Why did you choose to set them up like that?
Rios de la Luz: So, when I was thinking about the setup of the story, my main concern was Marisol, and giving her people in her life who would help her, whether in death or while still alive. I wanted to sort of mimic my own traumas that had happened as a child, fictionalize them.
With Itzá in general, I knew I wanted to write a fictionalized version of what happened to me as a child, but I also understood that when you’re writing a character, it’s another kind of being. I knew that Marisol was going to suffer, so I wanted to give her those people in her life that would help her and that would take her out of all the things that happened with trauma, like the episodes and the triggers that happened often.
I wanted to tell the fictionalized version of my story, but also give her the gift of survival and the ability to make this man disappear. With the two abuelas and the mother, the reason that I wrote it that way is because for me, my mother played a similar role as a child, where I realized that we have this romanticized version of what mothers are, and sometimes it turns out that they’re also just human beings and they make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are lethal, or you remember those things for the rest of your life.
I wanted to tell the fictionalized version of my story, but also give her the gift of survival and the ability to make this man disappear.
When I wrote Itzá, I literally poured a lot of me into it, emotionally. So I think in a sense, Abuelita and Abuela, they were idealized versions of who I would have wanted to have as well when I was small. Basically, to give Marisol people there as comfort and as ways to push her towards survival.
ME: If you had to put Itzá in a genre, what would it be?
RL: I think something I’ve tried since I started writing is that I don’t want to lump myself into any kind of genre, and I actually love experimenting with different genres. I’ve written horror stories, I’ve written sci-fi stories, I guess I’ve written magical realism, I’ve written nonfiction essays, creative essays.
ME: As a writer, what allows you to be experimental? What would you tell other writers who are thinking of being experimental but are afraid?
RL: I think that at the end of the day, like with any other, if you have a specific vision or you have a specific story you want to tell, and that’s the way you feel you can tell it, then fight for your words. Don’t hold yourself back. I would say fight for the story you want to tell and if you know it has to be told a certain way, be adamant about it. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can never take criticism, or anything like that.
ME: Hair is a constant theme throughout “The Year of the Tenacious Hair.” The grandmother’s hair keeps growing, and later Marisol uses it as a bracelet. What is the significance of hair in your writing?
RL: I think hair is a powerful thing. It’s a part of you. It holds whatever memories you’re carrying with you, depending on how long it is. And in magic, hair is used a lot. You can use it in different kinds of spells, but also because Abuelita’s hair grew so much, I made it so that it was something that Marisol could keep for a while. It’s something to remind her of Abuelita. It’s something she felt was protective, so that’s why she would use it. That’s why Abuelita would put it around the wrists and ankles of babies when they’re born. People believed in her power in general, but also the power of her hair. In my mind I was like, Abuelita’s hair has powers.
ME: Later, we learn the abuelas are witches, and then one of them kills men, specifically politicians. I find the use of violence very striking, especially with female characters, because we don’t see that often. Would you talk about using violence?
RL: One of my favorite genres for a while was revenge, so like, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the Park Chang-wook [movies] like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Oldboy? They’re all stories of revenge. But Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is my favorite. I also see certain horror movies as revenge, like Ringu, or The Ring. It’s something that has fascinated me for a very long time. I think part of the reason it fascinated me is because there’s revenge, and then there’s the idea of forgiveness.
I do think that forgiveness is something that, the concept is utilized for people that have been victimized. Like, you can tell someone that’s been a victim of something, ‘oh you should just forgive them.’ And then that makes you a better person. But at the end of it, I’m like, why does that have to be the only concept that exists? Why can’t revenge be the concept in there as well? Why can’t we have that kind of catharsis as well? Like, for me, forgiveness is not a concept that I fuck with, unless it’s for people, in general, [but] for the person that abused me for a long time, I’m never going to forgive them. But that’s something that’s been used. ‘Oh well, you should, because you’ll feel better. It helps you move on.’ And its like ‘no, I don’t think so.’
But at the end of it I’m like why does that have to be the only concept that exists? Why can’t revenge be the concept in there as well?
So, I wanted to incorporate the concept for revenge, because in the story the abuela does have that super strength and she has this power. I was thinking ‘how can she utilize it in way where, I guess it’s ‘justified?’’ And I put justified in quotations, because some people are anti-violence altogether. So, for me I was like ‘ok, what if she’s doing this to men who are abusive to their partners? Or these politicians who literally, as we know now, are for the caging of our people?’ So, that’s why I picked politicians, and that’s why she, abuela, picked politicians.
We are more willing to forgive the men and women who commit these horrible atrocities, or who put their money into these horrible atrocities because they have a friendly face, or because we believe in politicians so bad. There’s something in us that’s like ‘yes, I believe the president can actually change shit.’ And it’s bullshit.
That’s why I wanted to use them in particular, is because at the end of the day, I think a lot of these people feel like they’re safe, they feel protected in a way. Some of these senators have been in office forever, or they just get those same positions of power, and they keep making these sorts of laws, and nothing happens. So, that’s part of the reason I incorporated abuela actually doing something about it, and give them a little bit of horror in their life, in their cushy, wealthy, whatever kind of life. To show them ‘this is reality that you created. Can you tell why you think brown children are a threat? Can you tell me why you think any human being is illegal? Can you tell me those reasons?’ And even if they did, abuela was going to kill them because that’s just how she weighed justice. Not that abuela’s heart lies in vengeance, but it lies in her people. Who sees her people not as little ploys of ‘oh if I say these people are animals my votes or going to go up, or my support rate is going to go up.’ But, who actually sees us as people. I know that sounds intense, but I wanted that.
ME: You kind of already talked about it, but why witches?
RL: It’s always something that’s been a part of my life. I’ve always had little elements of magic in my life, whether it be tarot, or even things like ghost stories. It just feels like it’s the right thing. I felt like those would be the women that would have those powers to shift energy.
I think with words in particular, they definitely have specific kinds of energy. Like I mentioned this with Itzá, before, and I will always say this when I read, is I’ll mention how the book is written as a spell.
I think with words in particular, they definitely have specific kinds of energy.
ME: What does that mean?
RL: So, as Marisol was healing throughout the book, it was all written as spell to imprint a piece of the fake father inside. So, he’s stuck in every copy, like he can’t get out. That’s part of Marisol’s healing as well. That’s not something that can actually happen for survivors, right? Like, we always have the imprint of that person, whether we like it or not. They just kind of stay with us, it’s just a matter of how well the resources that we have to help our ways out of going through, I call them episodes and out-of-body sort of things. So, I wanted the perpetrator of the violence to be trapped. As people read [the book] she gets to heal more, and more, and he disappears more, and more, and more. The point of it is that eventually he will be gone, and she won’t. That’s part of her healing journey. I wanted to do that because it’s not something that can actually happen to people who have survived certain kinds of violence, but it felt liberating to write that for her.
The point of it is that eventually he will be gone, and she won’t. That’s part of her healing journey
ME: Did you also mention that your mom was a witch?
RL: She was, yeah. So, my mother went through a lot of different phases. What’s interesting is, I think at this point, so, I guess we’ll call them the dark times of my childhood, to put it lightly. That would have been from ages 6 to 8, this was my mother’s boyfriend at the time, and he’s actually the father of my three younger siblings, so I guess we can just call him my fake father. He was in our lives for that brief period of time, and then all of a sudden he was gone after my youngest sister was born. Then my mother started practicing witchcraft.
She would read tarot, she would even do cartomancy, where you have just a deck of regular cards with the spades, the diamonds, the hearts, and the clubs, she would just use those, and you would ask questions. And I guess she says there’s an intermediary sort of entity that answers for her through the cards. She would do that, and she made a lot of love spells. I remember that in particular because people would come, they’d give her a piece of paper. I never looked at the paper because I would just watch her, there’s information on the person, and she would take us whenever she was delivering stuff or throwing stuff into whatever, that was a brief part of something she just started doing.
And then she met my stepdad and then she stopped, which I mean, I think this is a funny story. I don’t know if other people think it’s funny. My mom told us that she made a love spell for my stepdad so that he would marry her, and he did marry her, and they’re still together. So that was a part of what I saw growing up, briefly, but it was there, and I remember it. It was normal to walk in and ‘okay my mom is making some shit.’
ME: The ocean is also a constant theme throughout, it’s where many of the characters get their strength. Can you talk about the ocean and its significance?
RL: For me, I think even though I’m not the best swimmer and I flail in water, and I panic in water, I think water is my element, and that’s why I made them water witches. I was also living in Portland at the time, so water is constant. It really is always raining, unless it’s summertime, or if it’s not raining it’s so humid. It’s disgusting. Water is always there, and then the ocean is nearby. So, I think just being able to see certain parts of the Pacific, that’s why I wanted to include the ocean in it because being by certain kinds of water is very overwhelming, and it feels magic. The ocean does something to us when we’re there, whether you’re listening to it or you’re in it. I do think it has a specific kind of energy. It’s powerful. It’s immense. It’s its own universe within itself, you know? Like, there’s parts of the ocean, or creatures, that we’re never going to see. It has a lot of power, I think.
ME: Later, we also found out that both of the sisters in Itzá are queer. Can you talk about that?
RL: I think all characters should be queer. I think with queer stories, often times where there’s queer characters, it’s placed in tragedy. You know? Like something happened to the couple, or one of the couple’s died off. I think this happens in TV shows often. So, just the idea that queer stories can be whatever, they can be a part of magical realism, or it can just be a story of two sisters, but it also happens that they’re queer, and that’s it, that’s reality, too. It shouldn’t be out of the norm. Queer people exist, we’ve always existed. I try to write from the perspective of queer women, or queer girls. It’s always what I try to go for. I’ve never written in a story from a man’s perspective, just because I don’t think it’s interesting, or I don’t think I can make it interesting, or I would make him a villain immediately. Anytime I write, even if it’s not explicitly said, typically my characters are queer. Even if I don’t say it.
It shouldn’t be out of the norm. Queer people exist, we’ve always existed.
ME: The second half of your book deals very intimately with the sexual assault of Marisol. It feels like she’s kind of lost without her abuelas. Can you talk about that section of the book? What was it like writing so intimately about sexual assault?
RL: From the beginning, I knew what Itzá was going to be about, aside from the concept of being a family of water witches. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted to write about, as far as the concept of trauma. So, I wanted to place people into the panic, and the fear, and how horrific it feels to go through something like that. But I also didn’t want to explicitly write any scenes where I showed exactly what happened, because I don’t think that’s necessary to understand how horrible something like that is.
With the second part, with certain chapters I thought of it more as horror, right? So even in the The Holy Ghost, when I was imagining the fake father, I was thinking of him as this sort of creature crawling on the walls. I was thinking of a horror film where maybe it’s a demon that you see, or something like that. Because I think that was a way for me to be able to do it in a way where you can see how a kid or Marisol saw him or what he was to her. He was a sort of monster, right? So that’s what I went into it thinking about.
Oftentimes, monsters in movies and stuff, they’ll represent parts of ourselves. But what I wanted to do was just create a human who was just a monster, as opposed to him representing anything. He is just a monster to this character. I wanted to, with the scenes of abuse, I wanted them to be very fast, and I wanted them just go bam, bam, bam. So, you can just get a quick glimpse into what it’s like, but even when I wrote it, [it] was in frantic states, so using that energy and putting into those chapters so people can feel it too. I wanted to get people through those as quickly as I could, but also incorporate certain kinds of scenes and kinds of imagery, to just show what something like that does mentally and physically.
But yeah, I think those were some of the first parts I wrote, but they were also really hard to write.
ME: I was going to ask how was that for you?
RL: It was hard. Girl, I cry, I just cry all the time. I think I cried a lot and I just pushed myself through it. It was one of those things where I was like ‘I have to write this, and I have to get it out of my system.’ Because at that point I had finally started writing about things that had happened, but before I was writing, if I would write about the things that happened it would be like in secret. Not that I had to have a megaphone and announce what happened, but in a way just saying things and putting them out, made me feel like I had a sort of power. But, yeah, those were hard, those were difficult. I can’t say that I enjoyed writing those parts.
ME: But did it feel therapeutic in a way? Like you were letting it go?
RL: I mean, with Itzá, like I had said, when I started writing that, I had already started writing nonfiction about things that had happened. So, what I started realizing is for me, even though I would write with intent, or I would write to get certain things out, sometimes all it would do is just place me back into those places, so it wasn’t helping. So, I was like ‘what is a way I can fictionalize this, so that it’s not me, it’s someone else, but I can end up making it so she survives and he disappears.’ Writing isn’t necessarily therapy. I think it’s Morgan Parker who said this. Writing is writing, therapy is therapy, right? I think often times people who have trauma, I think it does feel good when you first say it, and when you first write about it, or when you explore it, but then after a while if you just keep writing it over and over, if it’s actually helping you then good, but if it’s not, then maybe that’s not the route you should continue. That’s what I found for myself, is if I kept writing that story it wasn’t helping me. And I think at this point like I can talk about it comfortably, but I’m done with writing about that part of myself.
Writing isn’t necessarily therapy. I think it’s Morgan Parker who said this. Writing is writing, therapy is therapy, right?
ME: What do you want people to take from Itzá?
RL: So, with my short story collection, I realize you’re going to put your book out into the world, and people are going to take it how they take it. So, I don’t necessarily, I don’t want to set any expectations on what I want people to take out of it. But I want it to go into the right hands, to the right people that need to read it, when they need to read it.
ME: You work two jobs, and you work forty hours a week. There’s a lot of working writers out there. Is there any advice for people that are trying to write a book while surviving in the world?
RL: I would say one of the most import things I’ve learned so far is that if you live with other people, is to have them understand that your time is important. And what I mean by that is that if you feel that urge to write, or if you’re going to make yourself write, even if it’s for two hours, is just to let other people know ‘hey for these next to hours I’m going to write, can we calm the chaos?’ Because my niece and nephew they’re little gremlins, and they’re so loud, and even tell them ‘hey, I’m going to write for a couple of hours ok? Can you all just watch the T.V. on low?’ Just having other people understand that creative time is important.
And another thing I would say is sometimes you’re really just going to be too tired, and not to beat yourself up if you’re not being productive because you have been productive, like if you’re working two jobs, you’re being productive but sometimes your energy is depleted, and you should give yourself the gift of resting in you have that option. And then also, just don’t feel guilty if you don’t write every day, if that’s your goal. Because I do think you can learn from other kinds of, but you can learn storytelling from watching movies, like I watch Korean dramas, you can learn different forms of storytelling. You can look at different things as methods of learning how to storytell.
Maria Esquinca is an MFA candidate at the University of Miami. She is the winner of the 2018 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize, judged by Victoria Chang. Her poetry has appeared in The Florida Review, Scalawag magazine, Acentos Review and is forthcoming from Glass: A Journal of Poetry and Waxwing. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, México and grew up in El Paso, Texas. You can find her on Twitter @m_esquinca.
Rios de la Luz is a queer xicana and chapina living in El Paso. She is the author of the short story collection, The Pulse Between Dimensions and The Desert (Ladybox Books, 2015) and the novella, Itzá (Broken River Books, 2017). Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Luna Luna Magazine, Corporeal Clamor, Broadly, WOHE Lit and St. Sucia. You can read her non-fiction work in the upcoming anthology, Burn It Down (Seal Press, 2019).
This interview has been edited for clarity.
