Luz
Copyright © 2020, Debra Thomas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2020
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-870-5
ISBN: 978-1-63152-871-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918531
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The role Dolores Huerta plays is entirely fictional, although it is consistent with her actions in real life.
for Mom and Dad who always put us first
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
Mary Oliver
Darkness cannot drive out darkness,
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate,
only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Foreword
by Alma Luz Villanueva
When I was first contacted by Debra Thomas to perhaps read through, with commentary, her novel Luz, having to do with the immigrant experience (Mexico, Central America), those crossing the border to the United States, risking their lives, many dying, that dangerous crossing—I was hesitant. Debra is not a Latina. And so, I replied that I needed to know more about the impetus to write a novel with these immigrant themes—her concerns, the whys of the desire to write this novel. Debra responded fully in a passionate email, which is now in an Author’s Note at the end of the novel. When I read that she’s worked with immigrant communities in Southern California for decades, is an immigrant rights activist, has toured with Amnesty International to the US/Mexico border (speaking to people both sides of the border, including Border Patrol agents), and left jugs of water—the Blue Flags Water Station Project in the Imperial Valley Desert—for immigrants who would otherwise die of thirst and heat, and thousands do, I agreed to read this novel. And I’m so glad I did. This novel and all of the characters continue to resonate within me.
Of course, I was struck, first of all, that her main character is Alma; her daughter Luz. I laughed out loud, as I’m Alma Luz. Then the opening of the novel with Alma and Luz leads to Recuerdo . . . (“Memory”), and from then on, I was carried like a soft wind, then a strong wind, to a stronger wind, to a tornado wind. The final crossing into the States, a brutal attack (which I had to put down a few times in order to read it through)—millions of immigrants experience this brutality daily, globally. I told myself, keep reading. As it is with every scene, chapter, dialogue, each character—it was absolutely necessary.
The love story of Alma and Manuel is a very tender central theme. Of course, the most driving central theme, what forces Alma and Rosa, her sister, to leave Oaxaca, Mexico, is their father’s disappearance in el norte. He always returned after working the farming seasons, but not this time. He told stories of the courageous farm worker leader Dolores Huerta to Alma, igniting her imagination. Part of Alma’s quest is to find Dolores Huerta once she’s in el norte. She does find Huerta at last, after a journey that would have killed most of us. With Dolores is news that leads back to that tenderness.
This is a novel of great tenderness and great brutality. Debra is right inside of her characters’ minds, bodies, spirits, and souls, and she doesn’t spare the reader either tenderness or brutality. This is crucial for these characters/people/immigrants, for their stories, their lives, to be passed on in an authentic human voice. The voice/voices are nailed to the page, speaking, truly, for millions of the life/death immigrant experience worldwide—the Mexican, Central American, this Turtle Island continent, as well as all of the Turtle Island continents globally.
Debra’s novel is focused on these so alive Mexican, Central American characters. You will be immediately drawn into their lives as I was. You will journey with them and laugh at the light moments, sigh with the tenderness, recoil with the brutality. You will witness, via this novel, Martin Luther King’s words (that Debra quotes in the opening): “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” You will experience Dar a Luz . . . to give birth, to give to the light. Believe me.
Alma Luz Villanueva
San Miguel de Allende, México
We are one humanity
April 7, 2019
Alma Luz Villanueva is the author of four novels, most recently Song of the Golden Scorpion. Her The Ultraviolet Sky received the American Book Award.
Prologue:
Los Angeles: 2015
“You don’t know anything!” my daughter Luz shouts, stamping her foot in defiance. At fourteen, she thinks she knows everything. Yesterday it was about a boy who is old enough to drive a car—a car that she will never ride in unless he is willing to wait until she is eighteen. Today her anger is fueled by yesterday’s argument as she tells me that I know nothing about the Central American children who are fleeing poverty and crime and have been detained at the Texas border. If she only knew what I do know—but I can’t tell her. Not everything.
We had been watching the news when the screen filled suddenly with young brown faces and a headline “The Kids Are Back,” referring to the previous year’s
