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Dear LATINA Style
Readers,
I have the pleasure of
inviting you to an unforgettable experience.
The time I spent writing my novel on La
Malinche was bliss for my spirit. I hope
that this historical character will awaken
the same emotion in you that it stirred in
me.
Throughout history, Malinalli/Malinche has
been known for her betrayal of the Indian
people. But recent historical research has
shown that her role was much more complex.
Even though she fell in love with the
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, she was
also the mediator between two cultures,
Hispanic and Native American, and two
languages, Spanish and Nahauatl.
Cortés was from a wealthy aristocratic
family in Spain, but he was so short that he
was judged unfit for the military. Faced
with the prospect of becoming a court
attendant or a priest, he decided to find
his fortune in the New World. Arriving in
Hispaniola, he was sent on a reconnaissance
mission to Mexico but took it upon himself
to conquer rather than reconnoiter. |
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Laura
Esquivel’s first novel, 1989’s Like
Water for Chocolate, spent over a
year on the New York Times
Best-Seller list. Her latest novel,
Malinche, will hit bookstores in the
Spanish version in February and the
English in May. |
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Malinalli was born into the
family of a tribe eventually conquered by the
warrior Aztec tribe, which, unlike her people,
practiced human sacrifice. When her father was
killed in battle, she was raised by her wisewoman
grandmother until her mother sold her off as a slave
and remarried—but not before her mother had imparted
to her the art of making codices, the pictorial
record of her tribe’s history. Malinalli was also
gifted with the art of languages and destined by the
gods’ signs to play an important role in her tribe’s
future. Her grandmother had imparted to her the
knowledge that their founding-forefather god,
Quetzalcoatl, had abandoned them for having been
made drunk by a trickster god and committed incest
with his sister. But he was destined to return with
the rising sun and save her tribe from its present
captivity. La Malinche naively thought that she
could change Cortés and convince him to respect her
tribe, but his insatiable thirst for power was
stronger than the force of love. My story will take
you through the course of history and down the path
of a passionate and unforgettable love story.
I would also like to reunite you with our ancestors.
Images and oral tradition were the most effective
ways of preserving stories during La Malinche’s
time. All of her tribe’s experiences were recorded
through images in documents, or códices. So my novel
contains a codex inside its book jacket—a codex that
Malinche might have painted….
I invite you with the wind, the fire, and the stars
to accompany me on a lyrical trip that will remain
in your soul forever. La Malinche represents the
union of two breaths, two desires, two cultures, two
hearts into one.
With an open heart,
Laura Esquivel |
