- When did you begin working on The Hummingbird’s Daughter?
I began working on the actual writing of the book in 1984. That is not to say, however, that I typed nonstop for twenty years, but that I wrestled with accumulating data and was figuring out how to relay that data since then.
- What is your relationship to the Urreas in the book?
I first heard about my “flying Yaqui aunt” in Tijuana when I was a little boy. Many years later, one of my cousins found out that Tomas Urrea, Teresita’s father, was the cousin of our great-grandfather Don Seferino Urrea. Somehow this jumble of genetic links boiled down to our generation calling her our “aunt.” In Mexican families, older ancestors are often known as aunts and uncles, so I still think of her as my aunt, though she may actually be some kind of cousin.
- How did you research the book?
There are several levels of research, which I will try to simplify. One: family myth and testimony. I wouldn’t call this part anything as formal as interviews, more like conversations with every generation of Urreas. Two: book reading. Three: archival research. This entailed tens of thousands of miles of travel and a lot of time spent with microfilm machines in dusty basements, in both the United States and Mexico. Four: interviews. I tracked down scholars, historians,
religious leaders, etc. Five: fieldwork with shamans, medicine women, and curanderas. I would say step five was the most mysterious and fascinating part of all the research. It opened floodgates of experience, both glorious and terrible. I have often thought that a nonfiction book about this experience would be fascinating. Ironically, some of this work overlapped with step one, the family conversations. Several of my greatest informants in the shamanic world turned
out to be aunts and cousins, so many of the secrets in the book were actually revealed to me by the practitioners of those secrets.
- Why did you choose to write a novel instead of a nonfiction book?
I will refer to the medicine women I already talked about. One of the ways in which Yaqui medicine is practiced is through the dreamtime. It is quite similar to the aboriginal dreamtime Bruce Chatwin wrote about. I quickly realized that you can’t footnote a dream. However, it
was in those ways — intuitive, suggestive — that I finally knew Teresita as a person. Finally, I felt that a novel was a way to arrive at the deepest truth about the events of her life.
- Do people in Mexico still remember Teresita?
Yes, there are whole communities that still revere her and there are indigenous communities that still claim her power in their daily practices.
- What was the hardest scene to write?
The answer to that is twofold. The most technically difficult scene was the one in which she was physically attacked. Records of that event are ambiguous, though the implication of what happened to her is plain. The difficult part of it was to keep the feeling of threat and danger
while maintaining the ambiguity. The most emotionally difficult scene to write was the passage dealing with her suffering and debasement in prison.
- Ultimately, what was the story you wanted to tell?
We are bombarded with events and hubbub, but true and mysterious stories of spirit and sacredness seem rare. And when I realized that the story was also deeply funky, it seemed like a new paradigm of holiness that people like me could relate to.
- Your last book was nonfiction. You’ve also written poetry. Now you’ve written this novel. Do you have a favorite?
This novel contains everything I have trained myself, or been taught, to write. My entire writing career has happened while I have been working on this book. So I would have to say that this is the culmination of all my favorites. If you could see the dates and the origins of certain sentences in the book, you would actually see stanzas from poems and threads of essays as well as fiction.
- How have you grown as a writer over the years?
Although I am not comparing myself in any way to this book, perhaps this analogy will make sense to you. I was always baffled by critics who said that Don Quixote was an old man’s book, that you would understand it truly once you were sixty years old. Now I understand a little better what they meant. I could not have written The Hummingbird’s Daughter at twentyfour; I could circle some
of the major events at thirty-four; I think I had to be older than forty-four to walk into the heart of the story. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have tried to keep an unjaundiced eye while learning a few things about life, and that has affected the voice of the book and the nature of all of my writing. Everything before was my apprenticeship.
- If there was a soundtrack to The Hummingbird’s Daughter, what would it sound like?
There is a Mexican group called Tribu. Its members are all shamans indoctrinated into various Mexican tribes. I would begin there. Drums. Crickets. Wind. And all vocals by Lila Downs.
Interview is courtesy of Hachette Filipacchi Media US, Inc.
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