On Friday, Sept. 30, author and UW alumni, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, gave a reading from her new bestselling novel Woman of Light at the Albany Public Library.
“Woman of Light is based on my own family history in Southern Colorado and Denver, and northern New Mexico,” Fajardo-Anstine said. “What I wrote was inspired by my great-grandmother. Her name was Esther and my auntie Lucy, her sister.”
Woman of Light is about a tea leaf reader and laundress, who is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer, and factory worker is run out of town by a violent white mob.
While introducing Fajardo-Anstine, Joe Horther, a board member of the library said, “It’s a story of a lost territory and colonization spanning from 1868 to the 1930s and that still applies to our lives today and a powerful exploration of identity and resilience.”
Much of Fajardo-Anstine’s history and culture, as with other members of the Chicano community in the Mountain West, has been erased.
“I thought maybe the archives could help me imagine myself into my auntie Lucy’s life,” Fajardo-Anstine said. “But I was surprised at what little information I had found on Latino residents of Denver, especially considering that a quarter of the state had once been Mexico.”
Witnessing the lack of representation in official places of recordkeeping Fajardo-Anstine came to the realization that she needed to become the history keeper of this generation in her family.
“Because when the official archives ignored our existence, within the closets of our own homes, our records were waiting and our stories were powerfully alive,” Fajardo-Anstine said.
Much of Woman of Light was written while Fajardo-Anstine was a student in UW’s Creative Writing Program and living in Laramie.
“It was just such an inspiring time, while I was here,” Fajardo-Anstine said. “The foundation of my creative work really happened here in Laramie, Wyoming.”
After her keynote and reading, Fajardo-Anstine signed books in the main section of the Albany Public Library.
Her event was the start of a series of events hosted by the library called “Experiences in the West.”
The next event will take place on Oct. 4 and will be led by the author Steve Dunn.
