With just two books under her belt, Brenda Navarro (Mexico City, 1982) has succeeded in becoming one of the most compelling Latin American writers of her generation. Hispano-Mexican press Sexto Piso has published her books Casas vacías (2020, translated as Empty Houses by Sophie Hughes) and Ceniza en la boca (2022), two novels whose “characters, stricken by pitfalls and losses, persevere as in real life.” Besides being an editor, scriptwriter, and journalist, Brenda Navarro founded #EnjambreLiterario, a project focused on publishing works written by women. Her novels have earned her a number of honors, including the XLII Premio Tigre Juan and the Premio Cálamo. We had the chance to talk with this Mexican writer about her conception of literature and how she tackles her writing.
Eduardo Suárez Fernández-Miranda: Fernanda Melchor has described you as “one of Mexican literature’s best-kept secrets.” What can you tell us about Brenda Navarro that would reveal some of this secret?
Brenda Navarro: Zero secrets; I’ve been a totally public writer since 2019. What makes me laugh is that, since that phrase appeared, every time they like a new book from a Latin American writer in Spain, they refer to it as a secret. Perhaps we’re not a secret, but rather, it’s that insufficient consideration is being given to the diversity of literature worldwide. I’m grateful to Fernanda Melchor for the affection she has for my novel and for my work, and especially for her collegiality as a fellow writer. It was her recommendation that opened many doors for me, and I will always thank her publicly for this, as I now do here. I enjoy writing, and through the creative process, I’ve found a sense of meaning in life whereby I try to understand the world, and it continues to present me with questions. Gospodinov once said in an interview that sometimes it’s better to ask a good question than to have an answer, and I totally agree with him.
E.S.F.M.: In Casas vacías, your first novel, the kidnapping of a boy serves as a launchpad for you to talk about motherhood from the perspective of two different women. Why did you choose such a tragic event to create a reflection on being a mother?
B.N.: I would phrase it differently: I selected a relevant fact like motherhood in Mexican society so that I could write about the various acts of violence that women experience, and how, as an offshoot, disappearances in Mexico and the impunity that surrounds them are intrinsically linked. When I wrote the novel, I was constantly thinking about disappearances as the zeitgeist of the story. The disappearance of a person disrupts the world, leaves it dislocated, incomplete, and that’s what happens to the two women. One loses her son, but the other has a disappeared brother. In both cases, the starting point is the same pain. Motherhood becomes a consequence of the circumstances that prevent these women from acknowledging an autonomy they are denied, regardless of their social class or personal desires. A person you love disappears and, in Mexico, that’s a sociological and political fact that I’m interested in continuing to decipher, but also, when you are a woman, it’s as if, as you mature and become embedded in the world, you disappear and turn into the stereotypes and desires everyone else foists upon you.
E.S.F.M.: Ariana Harwicz in Matate, amor (translated as Die, My Love by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff) and Samanta Schweblin in Distancia de rescate (translated as Fever Dream by Megan McDowell) have already looked at motherhood in literature. What motivated you to write a novel about this topic as well?
B.N.: As I was saying earlier, I never thought of motherhood as the main theme of my novel, but I’ll try to explain myself better. There’s no question that motherhood continues to be “the issue” for women, because socially, we are biologically destined for it. It is “the issue” to such a degree that I have been saying since 2019 that my novel is not about motherhood, but reading it inevitably leads one to talk about this topic as fundamental. It is a reading that is foreign to my personal objective, however. I understand that the literary fact is submerged in the presence of those who are reading, so I’m not going to tell whoever is reading that their interpretation is wrong. What I can defend is that I didn’t intend to make motherhood the problem, but rather, everything that surrounds it. I like to start from a strong event and then recount the debris. I like to think that what I write is closer to the dissection of the debris than “literature about women.” Why do I make the case that the novel is not about motherhood? Because motherhood is a consequence of various decisions and events involving these two women, but if you were to look at them from the perspective that what they most desire and suffer from is the loss of a leg, rather than not wanting to be mothers, there’d be a different reading of these characters. It would be understood that this fact, which triggers everything, is a consequence, not a cause. But since it’s socially impossible to stop assuming that motherhood is “the issue,” we’re still talking about this in 2023.
E.S.F.M.: On the back cover of the book we read that Casas vacías is “located in a context of profound physical and emotional insecurity.” Why did you settle on this environment in which to place your characters?
B.N.: The back covers and blurbs required by the publishing market are not in the hands of those of us who write. I remember that when I read the back cover, I asked my editor, José Hamad, about this, and he explained to me the need for the publisher to have a specific take on the novel and, to be honest, I’m not going to get involved in matters to do with marketing. I have my own voice and space to explain the novel and the publisher will take charge of promoting and selling it. It’s a shared effort, but not the same one. Having said all that, I don’t know if I believe that there’s physical and emotional insecurity: the two women are full of extremely complex and contradictory emotions, but precarious, no way! They have a lot of everything.
E.S.F.M.: In Ceniza en la boca, your most recent novel, one of the topics you tackle is bullying in schools. Do you think literature can help to solve this serious problem to which the weakest members of society are exposed?
B.N.: I don’t think literature helps solve anything. At best, it sparks conversations, and that’s where I believe literary language is definitely powerful. Humanity is what it is because we’ve been shaped by stories and tales that help us to make some sense out of the chaos that is life itself. Telling stories about ourselves throughout history serves to give us meaning, to structure ourselves, create power relationships, concoct wars, proclaim heroes, spread lies. We’re a fabrication which constructs fictions and I find that extremely interesting. It provides me with my own sense of meaning as a person. The construction of truth is a theme that inspires me: the nuances, what is told and from which perspective, not just in literature but also in politics, geopolitics, etc. And analyzing these tales, dissecting them, problematizing them, has a great deal to do with the field of literature. Those of us who have the chance to dedicate time to writing and being read are very fortunate. And if that generates conversations, I think the person whose life is changed by them is me as a writer, but nothing more.
That said, I’ve been promoting Ceniza en la boca since 2022, and when they tell me that it’s a powerful book to use in the public space to talk about various topics, like school bullying, I’m not going to deny the link and I’ll continue to feel flattered by it. And to the extent that I can, I’ll continue to participate in political topics as a citizen more so than as a writer. I don’t believe that literature has to have a message. And I’d go even further: an aesthetic decision I definitely made was to write complex characters, but I’d never describe them as weak. They are anything but weak.
E.S.F.M.: Immigration and precarious jobs are present in your novel. Based on the way you tackle these topics, it looks like you’ve used actual testimonies. Is that the case?
B.N.: I don’t like to be influenced by actual testimonies before I write a story; I’m not a journalist or an ethnographer, although my university training has led me to be interested in the tools of the social sciences. Observation definitely strikes me as fundamental for anyone who wants to write. You have to be alert to what’s happening in the world, and feed on everything that you hear, that you see, that you experience. In any event, I’m not interested in the type of literature that denies it’s fueled by reality. In that sense, there can be many realities and, as a writer, you have to choose the point of view from which to narrate things and construct an aesthetic piece of work. When people tell me that, in one way or another, my literature is “social,” I feel that what they are doing is denying me the possibility of being a creator of fiction. And I reaffirm myself time and again as a creator of fictional literature. If I wanted to be a journalist, I’d be a journalist, and I’m not.
E.S.F.M.: An element which triggers this type of emigration is the violence that’s being experienced in Mexico, and which you portray in Ceniza en la boca. Why did you introduce it into the novel? Is it risky for a Mexican writer to talk about this violence?
B.N.: No risk, no fun. If you don’t take risks in what you write, then why are you writing? It’s a serious question. I’m interested in the complexity of the human condition, and that has to do with violence. There’s violence in Mexico, but also in Spain; that was my approach. But there’s also violence in love, in sadness, in care. We can’t go through life creating only “good” characters, because for me, every sort of buenitud or “goodness” verges on the fascistic. To be good is to deny diversity, the complexity of every human being, but literature speaks of humanity in general, which is why it continues to be a weapon against the narratives of power.
E.S.F.M.: The title of your book, Ceniza en la boca, relates to something that happens at the end of the novel. Did you already have that in mind before you started, or did it emerge as you were writing?
B.N.: If what you want to know is did the title come before the story, then no. The title came much later. What does strike me as important to clarify is that I’m not just an intuitive writer, I’m also methodical. I can’t write a story if I don’t know where it’s headed. Whenever I start a story, I know who the main character is, what his or her conflict is, and what ending I’m going to give him or her. If I don’t know the end of the story, then I don’t write it. I’m very bad with titles, I take a long time to find them, and I always involve a lot of people to help me decide.
E.S.F.M.: You’ve worked for various NGOs connected with human rights. Has that experience helped you to create your characters, to make them more authentic?
B.N.: I think all the life experiences I’ve had throughout my four decades have given me the tools to write what I write. The question I would ask is: How do other writers create their characters?
E.S.F.M.: The brothers of the protagonists in both your novels come to a tragic end. In Ceniza en la boca, Diego commits suicide, and in Casas vacías, the brother dies in a work accident. Was this a coincidence or is there a “hidden” meaning?
B.N.: There’s nothing hidden about it. I like the fact that you found this connection of which I was totally unaware.
E.S.F.M.: In one of your novels we read the following: “What happens to postponed dreams, the ones that don’t arrive because there’s a nightmare stuck in your brain which isn’t letting you sleep?” Your characters are immersed in tragic lives, there seems to be no hope for them. Consider the protagonist of Ceniza en la boca, or Leonel’s mother in Casas vacías. Where do you think their lives might go, once the novel ends?
B.N.: I think their life experiences give them a perspective on the world which makes them more human, and in any case, freer. It’s hard to talk about freedom, but I’ll risk it: freedom isn’t free will intended only for actions, but an awareness of the world in a Platonic sense. And in that sense, I think in the two novels I like to make an issue of the notion that it’s precisely in those places that are considered full of oppression where there are cracks and glimmers of freedom. I like the notion that pain doesn’t make you stronger, but rather wiser, but in the Platonic sense, I insist.
E.S.F.M.: In telling your stories, you use the first person. Is that a way of getting more involved in your characters? Or do you use it to reach the reader more directly?
B.N.: It’s what the stories required in order to unfold.
E.S.F.M.: Sexto Piso has published both your novels. How did your relationship with the Hispano-Mexican publisher come about?
B.N.: My then-literary agent presented me with various offers, and we chose the one we considered the best. It seemed important to me just then to be close to the Mexican publishing market, but also with editors in Spain to accompany me in the process of exploring the Spanish market which has, moreover, been very generous to me.
E.S.F.M.: Your work has been translated into several languages. Do you tend to take part in the translation of your novels?
B.N.: To the extent that the translators allow me to. Sometimes they get me involved, sometimes I don’t even find out that a book has been translated until the very last moment.
E.S.F.M.: And finally, I’d like to know, what literary projects do you have in mind for the near future?
B.N.: I’m writing the third novel, which will bring to an end what I believe is a sort of trilogy, in which I problematize themes to do with debris. We’ll see what happens with the fourth one, but at this stage, this third novel begins with one of the characters from Ceniza en la boca. But I’m in no hurry; it will emerge when it’s ready to.
Translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites
