Talking to Spirits: Itzá, by Rios de la Luz
Read Maria Esquinca’s interview with Rios de la Luz, at Anomaly.
Rios de la Luz’s debut, Itzá is a book about survival. The novella, which blends fantasy and magical realism, poetically tells the story of an all-women family, Abuelita Araceli, Abuela Rubí, their daughter Magdalena, and Magdalena’s two daughters, Marisol and Araceli. A family of water witches who live at Mango House in the mythical border town of Nopales.
From the beginning, de la Luz provides us with a novella that is unexpected, spilling beyond the confines of the real world. She rejects “western” notions of logic and creates characters who delve into the supernatural. The women in Itzá talk to spirits and can see auras. They have vibrant dreams and their lives are marked by otherworldy events.
“In black and white, Araceli opened her mouth and light shot out of her face. Her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Green roots sprouted from her fingers…Araceli’s body stopped mutating as she turned around to see her Abuelita.”
Itzá is divided into three parts. In the first, Abuelita Araceli dies in her sleep on a bed in the middle of a forest. De la Luz illustrated a grandmother who strays from feminity, and teaches her granddaughters to live loudly. “She loved messy foods and smelly foods. She loved crunching the bones of the tiny fish and then cackling about being a water witch… She taught me to devour plates with moans and laughter and sloppiness.” Abuela Rubí also dies, and at the funeral, Marisol revels that:
“we wore red. Red because it represented the blood pulsating inside of our vulnerable bodies. Red because her name was Rubí. Red to remind us she isn’t fully gone.”
The first part of this book primarily revolves around the loss of these two elders, whose memories mark the lives of Marisol and Araceli. Their legacy functions as a guide for the two granddaughters, who look towards them as models. De la Luz has written two women who are bold and fearless. They take reign of their lives with joy and bravado.
“Abuelita’s favorite color was yellow because it made her brown skin illuminate. She compared her skin to the gleaming wings of dragonflies and the shimmering ruby throats of hummingbirds.”
Readers also learn the details of their witchery. “She told me Abuela used to sacrifice men in the name of protecting the town.” Abuela would go after men who were abusive to their partners. “She dug into the men with a small knife until she removed one part their body. An eyeball. A thumb. An ear.” After years of practice, Abuela begins targeting local politicians who advocate for building walls on the border. De la Luz creates a brown, empowered fronteriza who uses her powers to create justice for her community. Like her characters, de la Luz is not afraid to write characters that are untraditional, taboo, or violent, a trait not traditionally allowed in women characters. Itzá has an urgent echo that narrates the traumatic effects conservative immigration policies have on border Latinx communities.
In a later scene, a white man tells Abuelita “Go back to where you came from. Drown on the way back.” For the first time, we see Abuelita reduced to silence. “The air is pushed out of her and she struggles to inhale. She is silent and looks past him. This is the silence that ejects you out of your body.” The scene ends with Abuelita telling Marisol and Araceli “We deserve to exist.” De la Luz provides us with characters that refuse to be erased. She gives us witches that grab men by their throats, wrap them in American flags, and “survive at all costs.” Abuelita Araceli and Abuela Rubí become a source of empowerment not only for Marisol and Araceli, but for the people living with the consequences of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies spewed from the white house. We cheer for these two grandmothers. They become our Latinx heroes in a country that allows immigrants to be placed in concentration camps.
In the second part of the book, readers learn that Marisol is being sexually assaulted by her “fake father,” a man her mom married after the death of the grandmothers. Their mother becomes obsessed with the “fake father,” and refuses to believe Marisol. Unlike her grandmothers, Magdalena is not a character with feminist values capable of uplifting Marisol and Araceli. She screams at Marisol when Marisol tells her she does not want to get married. She becomes a perpetrator of abuse by siding with the “fake father,” ultimately costing her the relationship with Marisol.
“I knew Mami wasn’t always ugly, but I also knew, I didn’t have to keep her close. I could let her go.”
In part two of the book, it’s clear that Marisol and Araceli are left to grieve, but also to endure the world without the protection of their grandmothers:
“You sat with Abuelita and Abuela and told them. Even if they saw what was happening, you finally said it out loud. You told them reality was frightening and you felt lost. You showed them your hands. Trembling beautiful brown hands pressed against each other in prayer.”
From the afterlife, the grandmothers manage to communicate with the girls. In one of the scenes, Abuelita contacts the girls via the TV she left behind, and instructs them to go to her grave. Once there, Marisol finds a crumbled piece of paper that says “This body is yours, it will always be yours.” In that moment, Marisol is able to reclaim a sense of her body. Time and time again, the grandmothers rise from the past and guide Marisol towards a place of survival, even if only brief.
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. Rape, racism, neglect. The author creates a world in which matriarchal ancestors are a source of strength and wisdom for their forebearers. It is through Marisol’s relationship to the strong, fierce women in her life that she is able to find a sense of hope, despite the horrible reality she must face. Our heroes, Marisol and Araceli are also queer, something uncommon. In doing so, de la Luz strays from tradition and provides us with a book that represents complex queer brown girls surviving, thriving, and living loudly.
The third part of Itzá begins with an adolescent Marisol who is trying to overcome the trauma of her abuse. “We are not defined by our traumas. You repeat this in increments of three and then four and then ten.” The author follows Marisol and Araceli into adulthood as they have moved out of their childhood home, and try to create a new life for themselves. Their mother moves to El Paso and tries to salvage her relationship with Marisol, to no avail. Marisol and Araceli take a road trip to visit the Mango House. They find that it is not only abandoned, but haunted, and decide to move in together.
“It wasn’t a place to start over. It was a place to catch up. They wanted to reconnect with the women who sat in their heads like myths. They wanted to reconnect with the women who rooted them and instilled the imaginations that saved them.”
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).
