Uncovering the Secrets of Piñata by Leopoldo Gout
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Not many people tap into the spooky and supernatural nature of writers like Leopoldo Gout. I had the honor of asking the author and visual artist a few questions about his latest read, Piñata. Piñata is a sinister tale of the repercussions of actions and how our past can come back to haunt us— but more on that later.
Here’s what he had to say about some of the questions we had to ask him about his latest work head to review:
- 1. Tell us a little bit about your story and what inspired you to write Piñata.
Piñata is about a Mexican-American mother and architect, Carmen Sanchez, who brings her daughters, Izel and Luna, with her to a job in Tulancingo, Mexico. She’s turning an old disused mission into a hotel and brings her daughters to show them the country she came from, giving them some connection to their culture. A worksite accident opens a hidden room in the mission and unearths a relic from the country’s dark, colonial past. With it, the old gods, paved over by Spanish-Catholic colonization find their way back into our world to make us remember their power, remember the wounds still unhealed
from that time.
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I’ve been interested in the cultures and myths of ancient Mexico ever since I was a kid.
Discovering, as a child, that my father’s side was actually a descendant of a Zapotec woman. I relished having a real blood connection to the country I lived in. I did a lot of recreational research into the history of indigenous Mexico and during that research came across some articles about the use of piñata by Catholic missionaries and friars in the conquistador era. The Nahua had similar rituals, where
they’d break open a clay pot of food as an offering to gods, but the friars reversed this. They’d make the Nahua children break apart effigies of their gods as a form of obliteration. Hungry kids are made to forsake their culture to get some morsels of food. That image horrified me and I wrote the opening of the book that same night. The rest really flowed from there.
But at the same time I was writing, my daughter Ines was changing from a young girl into a teenager and that change truly impacted me. Truly, I heard her rage when the unnamable last president won… I listened to her. Her rage influenced me in the direction of this book.
- 2. Tell us a little bit about your book from your point of view.
It was an act of catharsis for me. I think the horror in the book and the love of the Sanchez family are a reflection of my own life and the world around me as I perceive it. There’s all this contemporary horror in the world and the historical horror of colonialism in Mexico, these things that I grapple with and confound me, and I wanted to push that through in the narrative. I think these horrors should inspire rage and an instinct for vengeance as they boil up from the darker undercurrents of culture. But I also wanted
to show that, much like in real life, that anger and pain are connected to our happiness.
- 3. What is your favorite childhood book? Why this specific book?
Too many but when I was very young I read the Marvelous Mud Washing Machine by Patty Wolcott and Richard Brown like five hundred thousand times. It was like contemporary art, Van Gogh, Mark Twain, Che Guevara, and Dr. Seuss all in one. It’s so fantastic and had a real visceral connection with my imagination and my proclivity to play with mud, climb trees, and howl at the moon. I also loved The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.
- 4. Was stepping into being an author from being a visual artist an easy move to make?
Well, while I am a visual artist, I’ve been writing and publishing novels for years. In all honesty, being a visual artist really helps with my writing practice. They coexist and feed on each other. My recent illustrated novel Monarca is a book I both co-wrote and did the illustrations for. To write, one must visualize, right? So being someone who’s always exercising my visual creativity helps me in working out concepts. I can paint out the vague image of a thing, something based on feeling rather than description, and then I have something easier to put into words because I can literally look at the thing
I’m trying to describe it in my fiction. Sometimes a drawing sparks an idea for a book or
a television show.
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We asked those questions you really want to know?
- 5. What did you edit out of this book?
I edited a lot of Nahua and Aztec history out of the book, for narrative flow’s sake. But in the sequel, I’m trying to really expand on the prologue of Piñata. I want to give an accurate picture of what life was like in indigenous Mexico and put the reader in that world to really contextualize the horror of the colonization.
- 6. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
What a cruel question! I have so many things on so many different burners in my kitchen right now, it would be an exercise in masochism to run through them all. I do have the beginnings of a sequel to Piñata cooking already, though. I’ll say that much.
- 7. What did you learn while writing this book?
It gave me a great excuse to really take my research into indigenous Mexico to the next level. I read so many academic articles and books, it makes my head spin. One of my favorite things that I struggled to wrap my head around which doesn’t make an explicit appearance in the book though is the fluid nature of the Aztec pantheon. The idea is that the gods could have and share many faces. They can share attributes and almost embody each other in a way that really juxtaposes it with our normal conception of
pantheism or the rigid ways we think about even monotheism. I found great beauty in that flexibility and fluidity.
- 8. What are you reading right now?
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I’m swinging between The Dawn Of Everything because it frees the way we think about humanity in very original ways. But I also have some collected poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz because I thought a lot about cosmic horror elements when I was writing Piñata as the tzitzimime are goddesses of the night sky with stars for eyes. Thinking of them up in the darkness, ready to devour the world reminded me of Sor Juana’s famous poem written in 1692; First Dream.
Closing out the interview with final questions ?
- 9. What’s the best way to market your books?
I go out on 27th and Madison with a sandwich board every other Tuesday and that’s gone well for me so far. In reality, I think that the most marketable aspect of myself as a writer or artist is my passion for the story. I will try anything I can for this book… I’m from Mexico, I studied fine art in London, and I’ve been producing and publishing probably since before a lot of Piñata’s readers have been alive!
My hope is that the vibrations of this planet connect with the ones of Piñata. It’s magic that’s hard to force but that hears you out.
- 10. When can fans expect the next book from you?
The sequel to Piñata is still in its beginnings, so it’s hard to say. It’s always hard to say. But I love that I wrote a show for Netflix called American Jesus based on a Mark Millar comic book that will come out in the summer. It has a lot of power and ideas that echo in Piñata. I’m also in love with Monarca and that book I’m in talks with wonderful people to develop an animated film such as Selena Gomez and Alfonso Cuaron.
Review of Piñata
???
Genre: Horror Fiction
Synopsis:
Carmen Sanchez and her two daughters Izel and Luna return to Mexico, as Carmen oversees the renovation of an ancient cathedral being turned into a boutique hotel.
The locals treat the Sanchez women like outsiders, openly defying and sabotaging Carmen’s work at every turn. After a disastrous accident at the construction site injuring some men uncovers a room containing ancient artifacts, Carmen’s removed from the job, and returned home. As strange occurrences continue to collect, Carmen doesn’t know what to do, or how to feel.
Back in New York, Luna begins acting strange, and only Izel notices the chilling changes happening to her younger sister. But it might be too late for the Sanchez family to escape what’s been awakened…
Piñata thoughts…
“The skeletal figure had no visible soul, an apparition. A thick froth dripped from its mouth, all teeth. Its tongue was a flashing blade, darting in and out between the bones, and around its neck swung a necklace of beating human hearts.”
Piñata kicks off with a major prologue, which is the perfect combination of heartbreaking, infuriating, and chilling. The initial sequence chronicles a brief time during a Spanish conquest of Mexico. A time when Catholics wanted to quell Nahua children. Subsequently, they would force these children to do various things but one of these acts would be to smash a Tlapalxoktli (piñata) and dish out harsh punishments like beatings (extreme beatings) for disobeying orders. This opening scene is both the climax and the opening for the story, setting us up for what I can only say is a downward spiral??? —in the best way!
Here’s what I liked:
You can tell Leopoldo is a visual artist, because the story itself really shined! The imagery was vivid. As the story builds and the story compiles I can clearly see everything clearly in my mind’s eye.
I really enjoyed learning more about Mexico’s history. The novel was rich and dripping with it. Complete with various cultures from the Aztecs, to the Nahuas. I had no idea how deep the culture of Mexico really goes, and it shows that the author loves his heritage!
The characters were well-developed! Izel is a typical teen who develops into a caring and well-rounded sister. Luna starts out incredibly bubbly and as the story develops she devolves and withdraws into herself as she is the most affected and the main focus of the story.
“Little Luna shone among the masses of people, luminescent in a way only Yoltzi could see. If she could see the vast innocence of the young soul meandering down the promenade, then something else could too.”
Carmen even felt relatable as a single mother, even though there were moments where I was rolling my eyes?, because she was being absolutely NUTS — way beyond overprotective, she was fully fleshed out and had great progression.
Things in Piñata that just weren’t for me…
While I loved Carmen as a character and she did her best and resonated with me as a single mother, she explained away just too much for me. You HEAR and SEE unexplainable things, but nah no I didn’t. Repeatedly. After a certain point, it was just unbelievable.
Secondly, it was really hard for me to get into the story. Beyond the prologue, once you actually get into the first chapters of the book it is like trying to light a wet napkin. It finally starts drying out and sparking around page 50 and then really starts burning. Once it’s to that point it feels rushed and burns a little too fast. The story could have been stretched for another 20-30 pages, and it would have flowed a little smoother.
Lastly, what tips this into three-star territory for me was the prose. It often felt painful to read and wasn’t as buttery as I often like words to flow, causing me to have to reread passages to make sure I haven’t overlooked a word or that I have read it correctly.
Overall, I loved the spooky tale. I would definitely say that you have to go into this with an open mind. Not comparing it to other reads, as Piñata is its own story and it holds up on its own. I had a fun time reading it, and now that I know there will be a sequel, I have to know what is in store next for the Sanchez women.
Piñata is out now everywhere books are sold! Thank you to Tor Nightfire for gifting me an arc in exchange for an honest review!
Would you read a horror book like Piñata? Let us know in the comments
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