What lessons are there to be learned from her mother’s story or her grandmother’s? How does one navigate love and womanhood in a city that’s burning? How does a mixed-race person consider their personal problems with the Klan marching in the background? Every escape is another potential trap, every love is another potential heartbreak. They are Indigenous and Mexican, prophets and gunslingers, lonely and flawed - as are the people who love and betray them. The women in Luz’s family define the American West even as they are victims to its impulses. Her visions, recollections that are both her ancestor’s and her own, only confuse her more - which represent the past, and which represent her future?įate, Fajardo-Anstine suggest, is circular. Luz’s sight is not limited to her festival customers - she can also see into her family’s history, reliving moments from fifty years ago as well as insights into what is to come. Still - with poverty and race crimes in Denver only rising, Luz focuses on a future she can control.īut the past won’t let her go. She eventually finds her way to a job that offers opportunities and some secretarial school at an uncomfortable cost. After a humiliating experience at a public library, Luz does her best to fight the systems that define her possibilities. When Diego has to leave town after being attacked by his white girlfriend’s brothers, Luz and her aunt are left with half their income and all their needs. She works as a laundress, and he toils in a factory by day, but some evenings they work festivals where Diego charms snakes and Luz reads the leaves. Set in 1930s Denver, “Woman of Light” follows Luz and her brother, Diego, as they hustle to make ends meet.

Woman of light by kali fajardo anstine