I felt invisible in my early life for many reasons including being brown and adopted. As an adoptee, I saw myself only in mirrors and photos. But being Chicana – born in the United States of Mexican Indigenous descent and with a life dedicated to social justice – I also didn’t see the people I knew, my friends and family members. We were all missing from books, movies and television shows. Our stories weren’t taught in classrooms and only rarely appeared in newspapers and then too often with a negative or stereotypical connotation. Even advertisements left us out. That absence inspired a desire in me to be present, to see not only the people I love honored and represented but all those peoples who have been marginalized and left out finally acknowledged with respect. That desire has become my passion.
We all know the Toni Morrison quote: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
“500 Springs,” my novel in progress, for me is one of those books.
A Summary of ‘500 Springs’
Two young lovers were torn apart when the Spanish destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521. In the 500 springs since, they’ve searched many lives to be together, proving their spirit and devotion even when fate has been unkind. As orphans meant to populate Nuevo California and as parents caught in the cross-fire of independence, they found each other, and tragedy, again. As a novitiate in a convent in New Spain, caught up with the famed but incendiary poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and as a boy stolen away to mine silver, they journeyed alone to a similar end. Finding each other anew online at the turn of the 21st century feels destined. A social worker from Texas and a community engagement specialist for the Denver schools, they suspect they have loved before, but as they face today’s challenges, including adoption, homelessness, addiction, and access to healthcare and opportunity, history reveals itself in past lives and in their own tangled family lore, from Plymouth Rock to Pancho Villa. The weight of the past threatens to break the lovers apart again, perhaps for the very last time, unless they can unearth their genuine legacy – and divine their place in it.