In a near-future Earth upturned by human-driven conflict and ecological catastrophe, the Androvirus has followed on the tails of SARS-CoV-2 to become pandemic. The islands that make up Puerto Rico have been abandoned by the United States: sold to China to help cover unpaid loans to counteract climate crises. As China blockades the US to demand payments, Imperial Chinese forces also arrive in Puerto Rico promising political and social aid for the former Commonwealth, and natural disaster relief to residents after a devastating hurricane that has hit the islands.
Meanwhile in Mexico, residents of the Yucatán also deal with the consequences of pandemic, ecological devastation, and war. The people have risen to depose their leader, a dictator known as the Caudillo whose anti-Indigenous rhetoric and politics seeks to “modernize” Mexico into global respect. But not before the Caudillo acts to “free his people from the primitivism they refused to let go.” He releases a biochemical agent known as the hydrophage, a desiccant that dries up swathes of the Yucatán and plunges its communities into drought. As in Puerto Rico, the imperial Chinese forces are eager to enter and to “stabilize” the region.
Within these two apocalyptic settings where all four of the Horsemen of Revelation ride, the stories of three protagonists intertwine via multiple points of views and narrative voices (first- and third-person). In both Puerto Rico and in the Yucatán, these characters face their dystopic present to envision positive Indigenous-led futures enacted by purposeful decolonization and embrace of their ancestral ways.
In Puerto Rico, Vero and his siblings have survived Hurricane Teddy (aptly named after American colonizer Theodore Roosevelt.) Vero steps up to lead his community in resisting forced eviction and settlement to Chinese work camps. They form a cacicazgo (chiefdom) modeled after the historically Indigenous Taíno people from whom they descend. Vero leads these efforts even amid fears among his people of angering the new Chinese occupying government and despite the discomforts of some individuals over his existence as a trans man. However, feeling powerless to achieve their goals within Borikén (the Taíno name for Puerto Rico) itself, Vero chooses to relinquish his leadership role within the community and travel to Mexico where the occupying government is centralized.
There, as a journalist, Vero continues his fight for decolonization and independence, discovering parallels and partnership among the Maya-descended Indigenous of the Yucatán. This includes the freedom fighter known as Loba Roja, a revolutionary who embraces brutality and Mayan cosmology to attain her visionary goals. Contrasting with the violence of Loa Roja is Doña Margarita, a woman who can only see a truly healing way forward from recent and historical traumas by embracing more peaceful aspects of her Indigenous roots.
At only 145 pages, Sordidez is a novella of staggering depth and achievement in weaving dual settings, multiple characters, several major themes, and a diversity of cultures and languages. For a first book, the novella is an even more stunning success for E.G. Condé, and it certainly deserves its starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. As its plot summary indicates, there is a tapestry of cultures to Sordidez, with influences ranging from the colonizers (Spanish, American, Chinese), to the Indigenous (Taíno, Mayan), to the colonized and imported (African, particularly Yoruban). This brings with it all the languages of these cultures, intermixed: English, Spanish, Chinese, Arawakan, Mayan, and forms of sign language. This cultural and lingual diversity melds perfectly with other forms of diversity in Sordidez, such as those of gender and ability.
The novella includes a glossary to help readers with select non-English terms from this melting pot, though I found the choices of what to include in this glossary or to leave out to be odd: incomplete, yet also listing words readily known to most English with even a passing familiarity with Spanish. I soon abandoned looking in the glossary, and just reading with contextual clues for understanding, which usually sufficed.
The overriding theme of Sordidez is of course decolonization. It could equally be described as Taíno-futurism or Mayan-futurism, and it fits within a corpus of Latinx speculative fiction that focuses on resurrection and reclamation of Indigenous ancestry. I won’t go much into this further, mostly because it’s not my specialty and because someone who is a specialist in it wrote an excellent review for the Los Angeles Review of Books that goes deeply into that rabbit hole and relates it to the characters’ actions (warning for spoilers within it, however.)
Even beyond balancing all these above things so well, Condé also pays careful attention within the text to make this truly a work of speculative fiction. This includes not just the Androvirus and the hydrophage, but biotechnology involving bioluminescent dinoflagellates and technology that specifically comes from Taíno ways of understanding communal life and ecological stewardship. While any of these alone could have been a major focus of the novella to explore (or expand into a novel), Condé uses them effectively throughout the text to give the story speculative verisimilitude and richness that readers should appreciate:
But with our kerosene supply dwindling, we had to find a new way to keep the lights on. Even though Teddy’s Category 6 winds shattered most of the island’s solar panels, Yuiza schemed a way to remake the debris into something that might save us. For all that our isla lacks, we have sunshine in abundance. So we weave the reflective shards of solar panels with kapok fibers from our sabred ceiba trees. We stitch solar microgrids with life’s stringy filaments. We call them our nasa – an Arawak word for the nets that our ancestors used to catch fish in our seas and rivers, when they were still teeming with life… The forest flickers. Like neon spiderwebs woven across the canopy, our solar nets activate. It’s as if a thousand fireflies are frozen in amber above our yucayeke, their light softening everything as dusk falls.
Condé’s writing rewards all the senses, such as concluding the above passage with images and scents of iguana kebabs and toasted casabe for celebration of restored electricity. Condé wastes no words or space in Sordidez to pack the novella with its wealth of ideas and cultural bounty. But he also never fails to make that writing engaging, entertaining, and optimistically inspiring even amid dystopia. I strongly recommend Sordidez to Skiffy & Fanty listeners/readers and encourage all to check out Stelliform Press if you aren’t already familiar with what else they have published.
