"I wanted to communicate her strength . . . her agency, and I was not interested in a story about a passive woman who was just a mouthpiece.": A Conversation with Veronica Chapa on Malinalli
- Brittany Torres Rivera
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Malinalli by Veronica Chapa | Atria/Primero Sueno Press | March 2025 | ISBN: 978-1668009017
[Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
“[My mother] placed her finger to my lips. . . . ‘A woman’s voice could be her undoing.’”
—Veronica Chapa, Mallinali
In her debut novel Mallinali, Veronica Chapa reimagines the life of the real-life interpreter who aided Hernán Cortés during his invasion of what is now known as Mexico. This magical story challenges readers to see this maligned figure anew and consider the influences of duty, ambition, and love on a young woman who herself was a victim of the powerful in her society.
Brittany Torres Rivera (BTR): While you have written professionally before, Mallinali is your first novel. What was it like to work on this book? Did anything surprise you about the process? And what skills from your previous professional experience were useful as you worked in this new mode?
Veronica Chapa (VC): I’ve worked in advertising, which is all about summing up a thought, a feeling, in as few words as possible. But writing a novel was completely different because the text was as long as I wanted. And even though in the advertising world research is involved, a historical novel was a completely different. Researching and digging into books and looking for textures and context is what I love. Advertising was fast: coming up with ideas to suit strategies and objectives in twenty-four hours but having a breadth of time and space and, for a long time, no deadlines, was great. Researching and digging into books and looking for textures and context is what I love. When I originally submitted the book it was over 600 pages. I had to whittle it down, and by the time I came to the editing process, I had breathing space. I wanted it really rooted in history, and it is, but I was still kind of hemmed in by dates regarding Malinalli’s journey with Cortés. My editor Michelle Herrera Mulligan’s suggestions and support gave me permission to push on the mythology, the push I needed to lean into the goddesses and pursue areas I was really interested in.
BTR: Latinx literature is full of mother-daughter relationships. But in this book, our protagonist's most important relationships are with her brother and with the priestesses, who she calls her sisters. Why did you decide to emphasize friendships over parental relationships? And how, if at all, is that connected to Mallinali’s power?
VC: I think it just happened organically because there's so much we don't know about her. Historians are still debating what her name was, where she was born, the year she was born, when she died. It's as if her life didn't start until she met the Europeans, which is ridiculous. So I immersed myself in a lot of different research books––history, sociology, archaeology, and anthropology––about the lives of women. I knew priests went to a school in Tenochtitlan, and I was thinking, was there a school for priestesses? And so I created the Temple of the Eighteen Moons. And, yes, she learned a lot from her grandmothers and the midwife and her mother, Jade Feather, but her mom is also fearful for her because Moctezuma has killed her father and her brother. When you were on his target list, he not only dealt with you but went after your entire family. Her mother shepherds her somewhere safe, where she knows her daughter will learn about her namesake. Jade Feather has prepared her as much as possible for her journey. And she knew that it was time for another group of women to carry on that process. Mallinali is forced to transform many times. And being rooted with her mother's teachings and then with the temple and the priestesses’ teachings, she came to know herself in a really powerful way so she could at least bend with the storms that strike her.
BTR: I think that points to the times when the rules Mallinali was learning helped her, but also when she recognized she needed to move away from that. In several instances, her boldness and her disobedience are key to unlocking her full power. While her gender keeps her from the house of magical studies, it doesn't diminish her power in front of anybody who knows her namesake. And even when she's taken captive as a concubine, that ends up giving her access to education and influence that bring her to power. Can you talk about the gender and the power dynamics at play in the novel?
VC: Being a woman in that time was difficult. You weren't allowed to speak to a man outside of the home and you didn't lift your eyes from the ground. I discovered the prayers, the poetry that was recited at the birth of a girl child: you are destined to live close to the hearth, to live within these walls while, for a boy, it was you're going to pick up the sword and fight for the Sun Lord and die a noble death. So, from the get-go, the book has that friction between the male and the female worlds. Her curiosity is power because it leads to knowledge and also to that questioning force: why do I have to do it this way? Why do I have to wait for it? She uses that attitude against a male force because I think that is how she's wired. She looks people in the eye, and she sees Cortés for what he is, and she's going to use him. She understands her mother's pleading with her to behave in a certain way, and the priestesses too, but she opens her mouth to protect and to guide and to negotiate. When she crosses over into that male world and becomes stronger, she loses a little bit of the female world and where she came from, and she's got to be humbled and remember the goddesses and the power of women, the power of women weaving cloth, working and growing together. Such duality was key in the Mesoamerican mythology.
BTR: As you were talking about how she's suddenly in this world of men, I was thinking about how we’ve heard the story about Spain's conquest and maybe assume a simplified narrative of it, but this book depicts the complexity of the politics of the so-called “New World” to which Cortés and his men arrived. As a writer, how did you navigate the historical situation which defies a simple good-versus-evil narrative, where even our protagonist has a hand in the destruction of her land?
VC: In the beginning, I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to write this book because she remains so controversial. Who am I to be writing about her? I was thinking of Eve and Helen of Troy, both women who were scapegoated, women whose stories were silenced and manipulated throughout time. The Tlaxcalans created Lienzo de Tlaxcala, which is a painted cloth, where Mallinali is rendered larger than the men to show her status and importance. But over time, her story disappears because Cortés is supposed to be the hero. Looking at Moctezuma’s world, he had alienated so many of the peoples who were part of his empire that when a strange man appears with these magical weapons and these beasts they've never seen before, horses, with this young woman who looks like them with them, well everyone assumes that she's of importance because of the way she's dressed, and she speaks with authority. They wonder, is there a connection to Malinalxochitl and the story of the founding of Tenochtitlan? Once I came across the idea, with her name and the association with the goddess, I just started looking at all of the gods and goddesses. Like many of us, I grew up learning about the Greek gods but knew nothing about the Mesoamerican pantheon and discovering it was fascinating. I wanted to communicate her strength, her center of power, her agency, and I was not interested in a story about a passive woman who was just a mouthpiece. She’s dealing with not just these two men, but with two patriarchal systems. Like so many women, she's a fixer, in addition to being the protector. And that's her weakness more than her ambition: her need to control all these situations. She's juggling so much all of the time, and she's rising to the occasion. In the book, I extend her life, and she becomes a teacher. She's not just teaching, but preparing women to be ready to use their voice, ask the questions, push for knowledge, push to be educated, and to be ready to pick up a shield and protect their brothers and sisters.
Veronica Chapa is a Mexican American essayist and award-winning copywriter with a master’s degree in advertising from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is the author of the recent novel Malinalli, which has been nominated Best Novel Historical Fiction (English), 2025 International Latino Book Awards. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband.
Brittany Torres Rivera is a bilingual, Puerto Rican writer. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Brittany is an alumna of the Fulbright Program and currently works as an Editorial and Administrative Assistant at Graywolf Press.
