Reflection is how we heal ourselves and how we can fix any problem or heartbreak. — Brenda Lozano
A breakdown of Brenda Lozano's novel, Witches
When I launched this newsletter devoted to books late last year, I anticipated giving many book recommendations. An unanticipated joy, however, has been all the book recommendations I am now receiving myself. And given that I write often about my tastes and books I love, readers are able to provide me with some pretty great reccs.
Writer
recommended I try reading Witches by Brenda Lozano on account of its brilliant prose and interiority. Plus, it’s a book in translation —originally written in Spanish — and I adore books in translation. I’d never heard of Witches but I requested it from my library right away.
I was captivated before the story even began as I read the six-page translator’s note, which is a piece of art in itself. The note reveals to readers how it was that she, translator Heather Cleary, made the decision to keep some words in Spanish while translating the story into English. Words like Muxe (considered a third gender among the Zapotec peoples in Oaxaca, Mexico, according to her note) and curandera (a healer) appear in the text in their original language, adding a richness to the story that wouldn't translate otherwise.
Witches weaves two disparate narratives together in a gorgeous — if violent — illustration of life in Mexico. Feliciana, a famed curandera living in the mountain village of San Felipe, whose teacher and cousin has just been murdered, and Zoe, a young journalist from Mexico City, come together as storyteller and writer; as two women living in different worlds but with many of the same troubles.
The book, which alternates narrators by chapter, opens with Feliciana:
“It was six at night when Guadalupe came to tell me they had killed Paloma. I don’t remember times or dates, I don’t know when I was born because I was born like the mountain was, go ask the mountain when it was born, but I know it was six at night when Guadalupe came to say they killed Paloma as she was getting ready to go out, I saw her there in her room, I saw her body on the floor and the shine for her eyes on her fingers and I saw her hands they were two in the mirror and the shine was on both like she had just put it on her eyes, like she could get up to put some on mine.”
That’s a banger of an opener.
Readers soon learn that this narration is a transcript of Feliciana, the first female curandera of her family, sharing her story with the young journalist, Zoe, who was brought to San Felipe because of the murder. They converse through a translator, as Feliciana speaks her Zapotec dialect and Zoe speaks Spanish.
Feliciana learned all she knows about healing from her cousin, Paloma, who was born a boy named Gaspar. Paloma is Muxe (again, this was a word translator Cleary left in Spanish throughout the text. Muxes are people assigned male at birth who dress and behave in ways otherwise associated with women1). Throughout the telling of her story, Feliciana reveals a simple life in her thatched hut with the coffee she drinks sweet like her father Felisberto and the tortillas her sister Francisca makes and the mushrooms she harvests from a hillside, which she calls Children and with which she conducts her healing ceremonies. Her narrative is rambling — it is a verbal telling, after all — but it was her wandering that hooked me. (I was very taken by that opening line.)
In Feliciana’s words, here is how she heals: “… the herbs and the mushrooms give me great powers for reflection because that is the greatest power we have on this earth, reflection is how we heal ourselves and how we can fix any problem or heartbreak, and so with herbs and with the mushroom Children I look inside the sick one, I see the root of their physical sickness or the suffering buried in their soul and that is something the sages of medicine can’t do.”
Zoe’s narrative is more direct, like that of a modern-day woman living in Mexico City. Her story focuses a lot on her sister Leandra and their upbringing. Of her sister, Zoe says, “In museums, the more abstract a colorful composition was, the more it interested her. If the image hung from the thread of some anecdote, Leandra would cut that thread with a razor-sharp phrase. In fact, she loved slicing through arguments like the strings on a marionette…”
A sharp and colorful description that I learned is characteristic of author Brenda Lozano, whose backlist I am now eager to read.
What I find particularly interesting about this novel is its form. Nothing “happens.” There’s no present storyline, unless you consider the conversation between the two women present. Someone is murdered and it brings these two women together. That is the story. In conversation, both women share their histories and plenty happens during those narratives — assault, murder, oppression — but everything they speak of is from the past. Until, that is, we get to the final chapters, during which Zoe talks about the three healing ceremonies Feliciana offers her.
Zoe recounts Feliciana’s ceremony: “This is yours, [Feliciana] said, this is your page and these words of the Language are yours, Zoe. This is the page you were missing.”
The heft of this book is in its many themes. Gender-based violence and toxic masculinity are among them. Sisterhood and motherhood are others. But the most powerful theme to me is the undeniable power of language. Reflection is healing, and reflection is language. Feliciana, whose words were all dried up after hearing of Paloma’s death, helps Zoe, the journalist, find her own words.
This is what heals. Words.
Feliciana says, “I don’t pay attention if people come tell me to tell them the future, I tell them that I clean like the water cleans, I clean the sicknesses of the body, I clean people’s deep waters like water that flows and smooths the stones of the river with its flowing, I clean sicknesses of the body like water cleans dirt from the body and heaviness from the gut, I clean the shadows which are sufferings because light exists but darkness is its brood.”
She heals, in other words, with language.
This book gets five stars from me.
Heather Cleary says in the translator’s note that Feliciana was inspired by the real-life healer in Oaxaca called María Sabina Magdalena García, who led sacred mushroom ceremonies, but María is not mentioned in the book.
I recommend Witches to those who are drawn to rich, literary prose and great characterization. If you’re a fan of fast-paced page-turning thrillers, this might not be for you. Have you read Witches? I would be so interested to hear your thoughts if so!
What I’m reading: Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri
What are you reading? Please share! Thank you for reading.
Love,
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I agree, I also love all the recommendations from others! And this sounds like a wonderful book!
Ahh, yes!! I had a hunch you would like this one! I first heard about it on the NYT book review podcast and thought "that's a book I have to read." I found it leaned a bit literary for my own taste but I was completely overtaken by the prose.