Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba's latest novel, Calligraphy of the Witch, visits the Salem witch trials via a mysterious, tenacious young woman named Concepción Benavídez, who is captured and taken from Mexico by pirates. As she is transported by ship to New England, Concepción endures horrific abuse and is later sold as a slave to a Puritan household. Concepción's name is changed against her will to Thankful Seagraves, stripping her of her Mexican identity. She soon gives birth to a racially-mixed but light-skinned daughter, complicating her own life further. Calligraphy of the Witch is simultaneously historical and political, as it carefully weaves together the stories of both mother and daughter, connecting the past to the present, while leaving a door open to the future.
BookZone: Calligraphy of the Witch is rich in its detail, from the descriptions of seafaring life to the clothing, foods, customs and beliefs of early colonial life. Your research was obviously extensive. Did you encounter any interesting discoveries or surprises along the way?
Gaspar de Alba: Research always renders surprises, especially historical research. One of the most memorable surprises was learning that in 17th-century New England, an unmarried woman was called a "thornback." Although I tried to find a rationale for this, I wasn't able to find anything conclusive. All I know is that a thornback is a type of fish with sharp spines along its back (perhaps this is related to the term "fishwife" as a colloquialism for a married woman). Colloquially, "thornback" signified an "old maid" who has remained unmarried for a long time. Another very important surprise for the novel was learning in a footnote -- this is why it's so important for novelists to read footnotes -- that there had been an actual pirate siege of Vera Cruz in 1683 by a pirate nicknamed Lorencillo, or Laurens Cornille-de Graf, and that one of the boats from that adventure had gone on to New England. This, of course, is what gave me the idea of having Concepción transported from New Spain to New England on a pirate's ship.
BookZone: The main character, Concepción, originally appeared as character in your first novel, Sor Juana's Second Dream. What drew you to the idea of creating a new novel with Concepción at its center?
Gaspar de Alba: Actually, it was the reverse. I conceived of Sor Juana's story through Concepción's character -- hence the name. The original idea for Calligraphy actually came to me in one fell swoop, literally while I was sweeping my apartment in Boston in 1986. I was ruminating as I swept on how to put together in a novel two of my deepest passions—the Salem witchcraft trials and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the famous Mexican nun and poet known the world over as the first feminist of the Americas. Both topics, coincidentally, had the 17th-century as a setting, though one was located in New England and the other in New Spain. With the detail of the pirate's ship, I was able to imagine how an educated mestiza from Mexico could find herself being sold as a slave in Massachusetts and eventually accused of witchcraft for having the writing and calligraphy skills that she learned and perfected as Sor Juana's assistant in the Mexican convent to which she had been indentured. Originally, Concepción was going to be the vehicle through which I told Sor Juana's story after she was accused of "speaking in tongues" and sentenced to die a witch's death. But once I started writing Sor Juana's story, the nun completely dominated the narrative and I had to concede that I had two novels, not just one. I always knew I had to return to Concepción, however, and see how her story turned out, and thanks to a sabbatical leave in 2004-2005, I was finally able to pick up Calligraphy where I'd left off in 1989.
BookZone: Concepción's discovery of an old trunk of gentlemen's clothing takes on significance when she later dons the clothing again before entering the world as a "man." By shedding her feminine identity, she suddenly experiences a new sense of freedom. What are your thoughts on that particular moment in the novel?
Gaspar de Alba: This changing of identities is precisely one of the main motifs of the novel, which is why its different sections are mostly titled by the different names that Concepción assumes in New England. Part of my argument is that diasporic people, especially when they have been enslaved, lose more than just their cultures, languages, and homelands, but also their names and identities. This is also a condition of heterosexual womanhood in patriarchy when women are expected to change their names from their father’s name to their husband’s, thus connoting a change of ownership from one man to another. Concepción goes through at least three identity changes in the course of the novel and grows to realize that only by assuming a male identity can she actually retain a sense of self that has not been imposed by others nor is it determined by how she relates to others. She literally engenders herself as a new man, or as she puts it, "a riddle dressed in Wolf’s clothing," hence her new name, Riddle Wolf.
BookZone: At a recent reading that you did for Calligraphy of the Witch, you mentioned that your three novels focused on themes of persecuted women and unjust death. Although grim, the stories are not without hope. What would you like to achieve with your creative work?
Gaspar de Alba: My objective in all of my work, creative as well as scholarly, is to raise consciousness and to bring out of the shadows the stories that are not to be found in everyday history books, particularly stories relating to the Mexican and Chicana/o cultural heritage. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a huge historical figure whose image appears on the Mexican two-hundred peso note, and yet we don't know anything about her in the United States, and Chicana/os who grew up and were educated in this country don't even realize that they have this amazing woman in their cultural heritage who was claiming a woman's right to learn, write, and publish her work in 17th-century New Spain. My novel, Sor Juana's Second Dream, brings her to light for English-speaking readers, which constitutes the majority of Chicana/os. Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders educates readers about the more than 500 young Mexican women and girls who have been brutally slaughtered on the U.S.-Mexico border since 1993, and whose perpetrators remain unpunished. Calligraphy of the Witch brings the historical animosities between the English and the Spanish, the Protestants and the Catholics, to the forefront and helps explain the deep vein of anti-Mexican sentiment that pervades the United States, but the novel also works as an allegory for the persecution of immigrants for being of a different color, religion, and language by people who themselves immigrated to the land they now occupy and claim as their own.
Professor Gaspar de Alba is currently finishing an anthology on the Juárez femicides called Making a Killing: Femicides, Free Trade and La Frontera. She is also collaborating with her partner, digital artist Alma Lopez, on a children's book.
