Today is 11/11 so I wanted to yell from a mountaintop, “I am bruja, hear me roar.” Numerology. Spiritual Numbers. Chakras. Energy. Brujeria. Foo-foo flufferoo. Throughout the years all this stuff has resonated with me, and I guess it’s been hard for me to admit it. Cuz when you’re trying to work for corporations or nonprofits, or thinking about what’s appropriate for LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter, it’s scary to present your true self. But I’ve played the game for more than 25 years. I’ve proven my chops in the biz world, so fuck it. I’m ready to come out now.
I Am Bruja. Hear Me Roar.
Writing THE NINE LIVES OF MARIA LA GATA was my process for finally accepting my own beliefs and observations about the world: It’s a big place with a lot of people living a lot of different stories…most of which have been written and recorded by Mad Men.
The World: Big Place. Lots of Stories.
No wonder my illustrious career in advertising never took off…
Anyways…! Maria La Gata was my bisabuela’s nickname. Writing about her helped me understand what it was like to be a woman trying to survive in a world built for men in 1920s Puerto Rico. I’ve never read a book about a Puerto Rican woman navigating the world during the 1920s. There are plenty of books about Puerto Rican women navigating the world in the 1950s and 1960s, but not the 1920s. So I feel like her story, and all the stories I’ve read about Puerto Rican women in history, tell me more about who I am than one particular book that claims to tell us who we are. I don’t have to name that book to make my point, do I? Isn’t it obvious? OK. I will be literal if someone who does not know me happens to land on this page.
The Bible is my mom’s family’s guidebook for living.
“Find your identity in Christ,” they say. What exactly does that mean? “If you’re a Christian, your identity encompasses all the abundance of being a beloved child of God.” OK, cool! I like the sound of that. They also say I am a sinner, and if I repent, I will go to Heaven after I die. How do they know? Because the Bible says so. They believe the words in this book are true. Like any book, I’m sure there are parts that are true. And like any book, I’m sure there are parts that are made up. Descriptions of dreams. Inspirations from God. Recordings of amazing miracles. All good stuff. But there is one thing that has always- always- always bugged me about the Bible.
All the words in the Bible were written by men.
There are stories about women, but none written by women. There are some scholars who are JUST NOW starting to ask if maybe a part of Hebrews was written by Pricilla and maybe, just MAYBE, there might be some other female authors. But it’s a stretch, and really without the feminist movement, would anyone would have cared to ask? This is when I think of Stan Lee saying in his writing workshop:
“I have a wife! I know how girls think!”
Really? Every time I read/hear/watch stories from women’s POV, there is a man claiming to know how she thinks. Or doing his best to silence her. Or coding AI that predicts what she wants.
“A writer is like God,” Stan Lee says. “If you want your characters to get married, they get married. If you want them to get a divorce, you divorce them. The storyline is really up to you.”
Just like Stan, the male writers in the Bible were like God, deciding for everyone else how we should think and act and feel. Homosexuals are evil and banned from God’s kingdom? Done. Don’t kill your neighbor? Done. Slaves are OK sometimes? Done. Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on Earth and had two sons, one of whom procreated with his wife…uh, where did she come from? That’s a plot hole. A bug in the code that no one has fixed yet…
It’s all made up. Thou shalt not be gay is not one of the 10 commandments, but you would think it was with the way American Puritanical Evangelicals interpret the Bible. If anything, maybe it’s covered under “Though Shalt Not Commit Adultery.” But what if two gay people are committed only to each other? They’re not committing adultery, are they? Oh wait, I guess the Bible also defines marriage as one man and one woman. Right?
Besides, you can pray away your gayness…right? Or maybe not.
I suppose I often resort to arguments from the gay political world when I am trying to say it’s OK for me to be proud of my bruja roots that were erased by white men’s religious colonialist agenda. There. I wrote it out loud on a blog post that will forever be screenshotted on archive.org (if I’m lucky).
No, I don’t sacrifice chickens.
My Christian family assumes “brujeria” means evil, dark spells and plots to force good men to commit heinous sins. I’ve not done any of those things, but I very regularly break all their rules. I jumped out of my bedroom window at 14 years old in the middle of the night, during a full moon, to run around the house – naked – on my own. It was a dare to myself. No, I never read about a girl doing anything like that, and no, I never saw a movie about a girl doing something like that – I just wanted to do it, just to see how it felt. I felt free. I felt wild. And I never told anyone in my family that I did it. I just knew I wanted more freedom to explore the whole world, not just the perimeter of my family’s house.
From what I’ve learned in my studies and experiences living in London, Brazil, Prague, Miami, New York, DC, San Francisco and Denver…I always attracted brujas as friends. The chingonas, the boss bitches, the females navigating their own lives on their own terms. So, as much as I would like to be like Jesus, cuz he was really a cool guy, I feel like Jesus would be happier if I just be me. You know – a beloved child of God. And it just so happens, God’s children are a diverse bunch. We aren’t all straight men with one POV, so if we don’t see ourselves reflected in the stories of the Bible, we HAVE to look elsewhere to make some sense of our natural gifts and abilities.
We attract friends and tribes who are similar.
Example: If you find yourself reflected and encouraged and supported at football practice, chances are you’re a football player. If you find yourself thriving among a group of chefs, you might be a chef. Me? Every time I moved to a new city, I attracted the good brujas. Whether Mexican, Cuban, Brazilian, Peruvian, African, Eastern European, Jewish – I found my tribe of good brujas everywhere I went. Some call themselves brujas; others don’t. It doesn’t matter – the idea is we have a particular way of feeling and experiencing the world that is sensory, ecstatic, exploratory, tactile. I am bruja, hear me roar.
I believe my abuelas on both sides had bruja roots.
Again, my family would freak out if I said out loud to them, “I am bruja, hear me roar.” They do not believe prayer to God is the same as the prayers of our ancestral women before “they got saved,” but the outcomes are the same: “God/Universe, please help us through this hard patch in life, please help us get the money we need to survive, thank you for all that you provide to us, etc, etc.”
So, when I think of why I wrote THE NINE LIVES OF MARIA LA GATA, I realize I wrote what I wanted to read: that brujeria is not bad the way Christians make it out to be. It comes from the native and African people, you know – the people Christians are always trying to erase and whitewash. That’s a dark agenda. Christianity can be just as evil as brujeria when people choose to forget about Jesus while stabbing their legalistic daggers into our eyeballs.
Every story’s reputation depends on the people practicing it.
Christianity has a lot of assholes claiming to believe in the tenets of Jesus Christ out of one side of the mouth, and then spewing hatred in churches, on the Internet, on the streets. And brujeria? Well, we’re just coming out of the closet. I think others need/want to read about those who identify with the light side of brujeria.
And on this day of 11/11, I am praying to God for the wisdom, patience, time, money and collaborators needed to shape this novel about my bisabuela into a work of art to be shared by all. If I write, “I am bruja, hear me roar” five times, maybe all the brujas will hear my call.
I feel like the timing is ripe as this generation continues to deconstruct the patriarchy. Oooh. “Deconstructing the patriarchy.” Such a millennial phrase. Barf. Haha. But hey, being different has never been easier, thanks to our 21st tools for communication. 60% of the college population is female. Dickheads who have sexually harassed us for centuries are finally facing consequences because social media helped everyone and their gay mom shout their voices from the mountaintop what their truth is, as it was inspired by God. And stories by us are finding mainstream audiences just like the Bible did.
It’s taken a long, long time for women of color to be of interest to mainstream publishers.
And now, watch out. There will be a slew of guidebooks inspired by the ancestral feminine wisdom. Maria La Gata’s story will be just one of many guidebooks that will help the next generation of brujas navigate the world in a way that is authentic to the core. Yay for that. Last time: I am bruja, hear me roar.