PRIMARILY SET IN 1930s Denver, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s debut novel, Woman of Light, is a deeply immersive story about the survival and legacy of an Indigenous Chicano family. When a violent mob attacks him for having a relationship with a white woman, Diego Lopez flees the city, leaving his younger sister, Luz Lopez, with their aunt Maria Josie. But working as a laundress isn’t enough to keep a roof over their heads, so Luz gets a job as a typist for a local Greek lawyer. When a cop kills a Mexican factory worker, Luz’s boss David takes on the case, and Luz is exposed to the inner workings of an unjust system.
Epic in scope, the novel covers five generations. While we focus mainly on Luz and Diego’s timeline in the 1930s, we also get brief glimpses of the people who came before them. There is Desiderya Lopez, the Sleepy Prophet of Pardona Pueblo, who finds an abandoned newborn and raises him as her own. This child is Pidre Lopez, who later departs Pardona after Desiderya’s death. In the town of Animas, Pidre falls in love with the widow and sharpshooter Simodecea Salazar-Smith when he recruits her for his performing theater. Together, they run the vibrant business and raise their daughters Sara and Maria Josie until tragedy strikes with the arrival of white prospectors.
The novel’s glittering prose transports us to a fully formed world with vividly rendered characters and landscapes. But sometimes the atmospheric language begins to overwhelm the story. I was left yearning for more, especially when it came to the complex relationship between sisters Sara and Maria Josie, whose histories could have further enhanced Luz’s coming-of-age story. Instead, the story’s larger metaphors become our anchors in a sea of time. We meet characters with mythic gifts, each of which pertains to an aspect of storytelling: Luz is a tea leaf reader; Diego is a snake charmer; their mother, Sara, has some foresight; and the Sleepy Prophet speaks to the spirits of “four dead priests” and recollects “a thousand years’ worth of visions,” though “her output was unsteady.” The past often converges with the present, as Luz’s gift, for instance, suggests a hope for reclaiming lost memories.
Ultimately, I believe Woman of Light achieves its aim of highlighting the triumphs and struggles of a people surviving under white colonial violence. Before his final moments, Pidre repeatedly assures his wife that “no human being can possess land” and hopes the visitors would see that the land can be shared. We know what will happen, and yet we hope with him. And despite the presence of “a distinctive American bloodlust” that includes police brutality, Klan marches, inhumane labor practices, land raids, and racial discrimination, Luz comes of age in a multicultural community that loves and supports her. She goes on dates, celebrates birthdays and weddings, and questions what kind of a future she wants for herself. In other words, violence doesn’t overwhelm the story. Instead, Kali Fajardo-Anstine prioritizes a community’s sustained solidarity despite oppression. This novel is a powerful resistance to erasure and a necessary addition to the narrative of the American West.
Elinam Agbo earned an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. Born in Ghana, she grew up in the U.S. Midwest.
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