Sofia Robleda is the author of the new novel Daughter of Fire. Also a psychologist, she is originally from Mexico and lives in the UK.
Q: What inspired you to write Daughter of Fire, and how did you create your character Catalina?
A: In 2018 I asked for a DNA test as my Christmas present. The results took months to come, and as I'd expected, the majority of my “blood” was European/Spanish.
What I didn't know, is that I also had a fair percentage of Indigenous “New World” blood, as they called it. I started reading more about our native history, especially about the Mexica and the Maya.
Growing up in Mexico City and Cancun, we'd been exposed to a lot of the awesome parts of those civilizations, but I wanted to know the real stories. Not just the stuff they teach you in school.
When I came across the fact that a bishop in Yucatan had burned thousands of Maya books, and only four had survived the conquest, I felt deep in my bones that I needed to tell this story.
Another consequence of that test was also that I was hit by the realization that, at some point, one of my ancestors would’ve been mixed-race.
Who knows how far back in time they went… I have family records showing that some branches of my family have been in Mexico for more than 300 years. Some of my ancestors fought in the war of independence against Spain!
But unfortunately, we’ve lost the knowledge from our Indigenous side, which is extremely common in Mexico. Everyone always wants to play up their European ancestry, which I personally find is a huge, sad loss to us.
Regardless, I was fascinated with the notion of being one of the first Mestizos in the new world, and what it would’ve been like to live with the duality of two contrasting worlds, two worlds that only a few years before were trying to kill each other. I wanted my main character to be female, as well, to explore the patriarchal notions of the time, some of which remain to this day.
I do remember watching the Knock Down the House documentary with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and being taken by her fire, compassion, and determination. I remember saying to myself that I wanted to write a heroine like her.
Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I went a bit wild researching this novel. I visited half a dozen museums, read countless books, travelled solo across the world to Guatemala to climb pyramids, traverse jungles, and explore underground caves.
I also got support from Professor Allen J. Christenson to ensure the words I used in K'iche' Maya were correct. He gave me the most thorough and incredible notes, and I’m so grateful, because above all I wished to show my complete respect and reverence for the original authors of this manuscript & the K'iche' Maya people.
What struck me the most from my research, was that the Popol Vuh codex has never actually been found. What we have is a copy made by a friar in the 18th century, who copied both the K'iche' text, and added a translation to Castilian. His work is now in the Newberry Library in Chicago. I really hope to be able to see it in person one day!
Q: What did you see as the right balance between fiction and history as you wrote the book?
A: I had some parameters I tried to stick to. If there was a historical record or if historians agreed on an event or fact, I left that as it was and tried to weave my story around it. If the record was unclear, or if there was disagreement on what happened, well, in my opinion, it was fair game to conjecture and use it to my story’s advantage.
At the same time, if something “snapped” the reader away from the story or era, if something broke the illusion of time and place, such as if the dialogue sounded too modern, I had to change it.
My approach was to weave the fiction into the blanks and the unknowns of the records of history. This is an approach I loved from writers like Hilary Mantel and S J Parris.
Of course, there is a lot of magical realism in the novel too, which goes further than fiction, but this is a style of writing that is inherent to me, and I think Latin American writers in general. We don’t seem to know how to write without magic, because it’s such a huge part of our daily lives.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Almost to the very late stages of the novel, I had no idea how exactly it would end. I’m a pseudo-pantser. I don’t plan too far ahead when I’m writing. I love the feeling of being led by my characters and discovering the story as it happens.
The best way to describe it is like walking through a dark forest with a torch and seeing the path as it illuminates ahead with each step. I do make notes of what I see happening later on, then write those scenes until they’re clear, then go off walking through the dark again. I watched a Masterclass with Margaret Atwood once, and she described writing in a very similar way.
Although I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to write – some authors I know plan every single scene before they start, others word-vomit for thousands of pages without any semblance of order until they pick out the common threads, then rewrite everything again.
R. F. Kuang writes this way – she describes it as “indulging whatever is in her Id.” I love that, although I think it would give me too much anxiety to have to rewrite 50,000 words. I don’t have the time!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am halfway through writing my next novel, a YA historical fiction called The Other Moctezuma Girls, which is also set in the same era as Daughter of Fire. The manuscript weaves the story of Isabel Moctezuma, who was the last empress of Mexico when the Spanish invaded.
In real life, she not only survived the conquest, but became one of the wealthiest landowners in New Spain, leaving behind a will, and seven children. In my story, I imagine she also leaves a second account, the true testament of her life, and all the secrets she kept hidden in order to survive.
She hides the different chapters around the Valley of Mexico, and her two daughters embark on a quest to find them. But of course, not everyone wants the truth to be known, and they soon discover the lengths that people will go to keep those secrets hidden.
It’s taking me ages to write this, because I also work two jobs as a psychologist, and have a 3-year-old son, but I’m hoping to be done by the end of the year.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I really hope readers love Catalina’s story and share it with all their friends! Thank you!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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