‘These are the stories I grew up with’: Best-Selling Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Latest Centers Around Survival During the Mexican Revolution
Story written by Mariana Huerta
Best-selling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“Ultimately, I always go back to writing what I know and including a little bit of truth in all of my stories, a bit of a personal note, even if nobody can tell that it's there in my fiction.’”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the New York Times best-selling author of the critically acclaimed novels Velvet Was the Night, Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow, and many other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu's Daughters).
Born and raised in Mexico before moving to Canada, Moreno-Garcia's Mexican heritage typically serves as a backdrop for many of her stories. Her words transport you to vivid settings and past eras, immersing readers in magical and mysterious worlds rooted in Mexican culture.
Her latest, "The Tiger Came to the Mountains” tells the story of a young girl's journey to save her brother's life in 1917 Mexico. Amid the violent Mexican revolution, when the revolutionaries and "Los Pelones" were in conflict, the siblings bonded over folktales while the dangers of the outside world crept closer. They escaped from the farm they lived on to the mountains to hide from the soldiers. The soldiers become scavengers, and a tiger escapes from the mountains, searching for easy prey.
This short, emotional story centers around survival. It is part of Amazon's Original Stories collection, Trespass – wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from six award-winning, bestselling authors. Prime members can read and listen to the complete collection, including "The Tigers Came to the Mountains," for free.
Mariana Huerta recently sat down with award-winning Mexican-Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia for The Mujerista to discuss her latest work, her upcoming novel The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, and stories she hopes to see Latinx authors explore next.
Below is a transcription of the interview. Minor edits have been made for brevity and clarity.
MH: Mariana Huerta
SMG: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
MH: Could you tell us a little more about your short story "The Tiger Came to The Mountains,” recently published as part of the Trespass collection by Amazon Original Stories?
SMG: The story is inspired by tales that my great-grandmother told me. She lived through the Mexican Revolution, so she got to see the conflict up close and what life was like during those times. And this story, in particular, takes place on a small farm. It's about a young girl who has to escape to the mountains with her brother because soldiers are coming in. This was something that my great-grandmother would do when soldiers came in. It didn't matter whether they were kind of like on their side or the other side, revolutionaries or government forces. They had to take what they owned and especially the animals and move them physically from the farm to caves in the mountains to hide them, or otherwise, the soldiers would take everything that they could, and they would also take people. The protagonist takes her brother and takes the animals up to the caves near the mountain. At the same time, there's been a train that went off the rails, and it was carrying animals, animal cargo, and there's a tiger loose on the mountain that night.
MH: You've written everything from sci-fi to noir to gothic and incorporated elements from Mexican culture and history. What does it mean to you as a Mexican-Canadian author to incorporate these pieces of Mexican culture into the speculative fiction realms that you write in?
SMG: These are the stories I grew up with. They tell you to write what you know, so I write what I know in many different ways. I've thought of several times, "Should I be writing so much about Mexico? Should I not be writing about other things?" But on the other hand, I think, "Well, how many stories about Mexico are there really in Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror?" If there's a saturation point, maybe I'll start writing about France or the Antarctic. But for now, I think it's still fresh and interesting. Ultimately, I always go back to writing what I know and including a little bit of truth in all of my stories, a bit of a personal note, even if nobody can tell that it's there in my fiction.
MH: Could you share a little bit more about your research process?
SMG: A lot of times, it's archival research. For Velvet was a Night, my last novel, it is set in 1971 in Mexico against the backdrop of a big political clash between the government and student groups during which the government killed and tortured students. There is a lot of archival information and newspaper and magazine stories of the time, but also documents that have been released by the government in the last few years. I also looked at testimony from people who were tortured and who wrote about it later on. I often look at museum collections to research certain types of clothing. In "The Tiger Came to The Mountains," there is taxidermy, so I took a butterfly pinning class to figure out how to pin a butterfly properly. It depends on what I can get away with and what I'm capable of doing. I'm not capable of hunting very much in Vancouver, where I am, but I did remember all the stories that my grandmother told me about how you hunt. She did get quite specific at points.
TM: Each of your previous books is quite distinct. I was wondering if there was a particular one whose reception surprised you?
SMG: Velvet was the Night was the most critically received book that I've written. Publishers Weekly starred it, and it was mentioned as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, but I don't think it's the book that my readers like the most. It might be the one the readers like the least. I think it's probably because a lot of the readership has come from the science fiction and fantasy arena, and this is quite a different book, but it is an interesting book for that reason. I want to be able to jump between genres. I don't necessarily see myself as a fantasy writer or a horror writer, or a specific kind of writer.
TM: Could you share with us some of the authors you have read that have influenced you or that you're currently reading that you want other people to know about?
SMG: I've always read very widely, anything from [the] golden age science fiction and horror writers to 19th-century classics to newer waves of writers that came through since the 1990s in Latin America that have a different flavor. Nowadays, I do like going back to the classics quite a bit. I am doing a kind of a rejigging of H.G. Wells and The Island of Doctor Moreau in July with my novel, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau. I find it very confusing when people say that they don't like the classics because for me, there's always something to be found in them, and I am as big a fan of Moby Dick as I am of somebody like Steven Graham Jones, who's actually also included in the Trespass anthology collection.
TM: Could you tell us a little bit more about The Daughter of Dr. Moreau?
SMG: It's set in the 1870s in Mexico in Yucatán. It's the story of the daughter of Doctor Moreau, and they are living with these hybrids in a farm in the south of the country. Everything is in balance until a stranger comes to her house. You don't have to have read The Island of Dr. Moreau to get it. It's a loosely inspired story, but it's my take on some of the ideas that H. G. Wells worked on in the late 1800s.
MH: For my last question, you mentioned that you still felt there was space in the Latinx speculative fiction realm for new ideas and stories. What would you like to see young up-and-coming Latinx authors explore in this space?
SMG: The landscape has changed quite a bit since I started publishing. I started publishing in 2006. Since then, there has been a really big boom in both short fiction and other kinds of fiction, with different writers of marginalized backgrounds or writers that you wouldn't have found normally in the 80s and the 90s when I was first beginning to write in this kind of genre. But there are still a lot of spaces that have not been kind of looked at with a lot of interest. Most of what I've seen coming out is in the realm of fantasy, at least for writers with a Latin American background. I think science fiction and horror, to a greater degree, are often some genres that are not explored that much. It would be interesting to see some more of that kind of work without forgetting that we have had writers that have done some of that already and are not as well known or have not been translated.
One of the things that I actually did through one of my own imprints is I arranged for the translation and publishing of La Ruta del Hielo y la Sal or The Route of Ice and Salt, which was published in the 1990s. I read it back then in Mexico. It is a queer take on Dracula by a Mexican writer called José Luis Zárate. It was this very strange book, especially because of the time period. There was a lot of repression that existed and still exists in Latin American culture and in Mexico today against anything that is gay or queer in any way. I just thought it was this astonishing novella and nobody had ever translated it. Nobody knew it even existed.
The only thing that is perceived as speculative fiction coming out of Latin America is this kind of really old-fashioned magic realism that nobody is really quite doing in Latin America anymore. It's like saying that you think The Catcher in the Rye is the greatest, hottest, newest thing. And so I thought I would bring this stuff a little bit to the attention of English language readers and let them see something different that we had done. There's a lot of older stuff that has probably not been published in English in all kinds of different genres, not just in speculative fiction that we don't know about. There are also emerging writers who are not living in Mexico, but maybe are immigrants like me or second or third generation who are doing interesting stuff. It's just that traditionally it has not been perceived as something that is worth your attention, or there hasn't been much of an appetite for it. So now maybe there will be more of an appetite for these takes that are not what we would associate with magic realism, which is one of the only kinds of genres that we have allowed Latin American voices to exist in.