The Act of Writing is a Salvation: A Q&A with Agustina Bazterrica
In under 200 pages, Agustina Bazterrica (Tender is the Flesh) gives us a harrowing look at a dystopian future through an unforgettable narrator. Cults, climate crises and extremism collide in this razor sharp story. Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Agustina and blog writer Isabelle McConville on The Unworthy.
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The Unworthy: A Novel (B&N Exclusive Edition)
The Unworthy: A Novel (B&N Exclusive Edition)
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The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.
The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.
IM: Can you please set up the story of your new novel for us?
AB: The world is empty and all the natural catastrophes that we’re seeing happen in different countries have already happened. There is no water or food, but there is a place that used to be a monastery where a group of women live now. It is safe from contamination from the outside world. The protagonist is writing a clandestine diary, where she writes down everything that happens in the convent. They pray to a God that keeps contamination out of the convent, but one day another woman arrives and things start happening.
IM: Where did this book really start for you? Can you pinpoint a moment when you knew you wanted to write it?
AB: In 2018, I was invited to the book fair in Cusco, Peru, and since I studied art history, I always visit local museums when I go to a new city. I studied a type of art that is local from that city in particular, which was made by natives there in an anonymous way. They have a famous type of iconography of angels with guns, and they’re all dressed in Baroque clothes. They’re so beautiful. I went to a museum called Santa Catalina Monastery where nuns used to live, but today it’s a museum. I was the only tourist, and I was looking at these angels and suddenly I turned around and I saw a nun praying in the other room. I felt like I almost died of a heart attack because nuns were not supposed to be living there. When I got closer, I realized that the nun was actually a mannequin. It was really sinister. I got out of there, and I thought, ‘Okay, I have to write something about nuns now.’
It also relates to my personal life, because I was educated here in Buenos Aires in a Catholic school, and the nuns were German. Everything was really bad in that school, and the nuns were the worst. I’m not saying that all Catholic nuns are bad, but the ones that educated me were really cruel. They generated a panoptic system, where all of your companions watched what you did. The priest was the only man in the school. Then, when you finally got out of school and went home, the Catholic God was controlling you. You’re always suspected of being unworthy, of being a sinner, of being a whore. You are always being monetized and controlled. That sense of oppression is what I wanted to work in the book. The idea occurred to me in 2018, and I start writing it in 2020 because I work a lot with the ideas first. I don’t start typing anything that comes to mind.
IM: I think you get that suffocating atmosphere across really well in this book. When I was reading, I had to take breaks even though it is so short because it could feel so oppressive. I think we can see, even on just the first page of the book, how this type of atmosphere affects our narrator. On the first page, you open the book with: “Someone is screaming in the dark. I hope it’s Lourdes.” The next paragraph is about our narrator thinking about torturing Lourdes with cockroaches and explaining how she likes to torture cockroaches in general. It’s a really great setup for the whole book because we’re seeing how this atmosphere really affects an individual and makes them go a bit crazy. Can we talk about those cockroaches for a minute? They come up a lot in the book; was there a specific reason for that?
AB: Yes, everything in the book has a second intention. You can read the cockroaches as the women there. They’re oppressed and they’re locked up. I’m also working in that when you’re in a dynamic of extreme violence and someone regularly gets violent with you, you’ll get violent with others. They represent that the victims of the novel are all women. There is a misconception that women are only victims of the patriarchy, but we can also be accomplices of it. Instead of helping each other, the girls are torturing each other. The dead bird that is described later in the novel, for example, symbolizes something else, too. I like for the readers to think about things like that.
IM: I thought this narrator was so intriguing; do you consider her to be a heroine of this novel or an anti-hero? I’m curious about how you see her and how you’re hoping others see her.
AB: I don’t believe in complete heroes. I think that all people are nuanced. In the case of this narrator, I think that she lost her ability to feel love, but afterwards, she gained that ability again. Ultimately, I think that The Unworthy is a book about love.
IM: I think so too.
“When you connect with humans and nature in an empathic way with love, you’re connecting yourself with God. I don’t need a religion to tell me that.”
AB: You’ll never find the word ‘love’ in the book. She never writes the word love, but I think of love — not in the romantic way — as the most important energy in the world. I don’t believe in religions. Of course, if you read this book, you’ll get to that conclusion. I do believe in a God, goddess, creator, or whatever you want to call it, that is pure love. I think when you connect with humans and nature in an empathic way with love, you’re connecting yourself with God. I don’t need a religion to tell me that. I don’t need the men in the Vatican to tell me what to do. In the end, she writes about the love she feels for Lucia, for Circe, and also for the woods. There you have God.
IM: I think it’s a really great way for her to find and express her individuality and find agency by the end of the book. Just like you said, these ideas have been preached to and forced on her to conform with the ways of the sacred sisterhood, but she finds her own path at the end. I really thought that was beautiful. This isn’t the first time that you’ve blended horror with climate fiction. Tender is the Flesh takes place in its own type of post-apocalyptic world. What interests you about this blend of genres and what draws you toward writing each?
“I try to understand why we live in a world where violence prevails . . . I try to understand it and find answers by writing books.”
AB: I have to say that I don’t believe in genres. I think everything is literature. Tender is the Flesh is being taught in a lot of schools, so I talk with teenagers about the book, and some of them think that it’s ecofeminist. Some of them think that it’s just realistic because it could really happen. Both books can happen in the real world. You don’t need a fantasy element for cannibals to exist. It can happen. A reader sent me a podcast of two guys in the United States, and it was really funny because they started talking about Tender is the Flesh. They liked the book, but they were saying that it could never happen because people would never let the government kill their animals. They’re saying that because they don’t live in Latin America. They can do that. They can kidnap your family. They can torture them, and they can make the bodies disappear. That happened during the last dictatorship in Argentina. They can take your land, and they can take your animals. Yes, I tend to write violent things, but I don’t start writing and think ‘I want to write a horror book.’
There is something that Flaubert, the author of Madam Bovary, said: “I’m writing with my burned hand about the nature of fire.” I think I tried to do that. I’m writing with my body that’s been trespassed by capitalism, by patriarchy. I try to understand why we live in a world where violence prevails. Today, as we are speaking here on this Zoom, there are women in Afghanistan that cannot study. If they want to go out on the street, they have to go completely covered. If they aren’t completely covered, they can be beaten. Why do we live in a world where a woman is being raped and killed here in Argentina every three hours? I’m not indifferent to what is happening. Of course, I’m a privileged person; I have a lot of resources and a lot of privilege, but there are other people that don’t. I try to understand it and find answers by writing books.
IM: That was beautifully said. That makes me think a lot about one of my favorite quotes from the book that I have here. “There are times I think that none of this matters. Why put myself in danger with this book of the night? But I have to because if I write it, then it was real; if I write it, maybe we won’t just be part of a dream contained in a planet, inside a universe hidden in the imagination of someone who lives in the mouth of God.” That quote is incredible. I wanted to talk about how I think we depend on writing and we depend on art, especially in these times of survival, in order to understand our world. Can you talk a little bit about writing that scene?
“The act of writing is a salvation . . . Art and literature save our spirits and increase our imagination. We need imagination not only to tell stories, but even to cook a good plate of food, to build a bridge . . . It is absolutely essential to read.”
AB: Every book and every plot demands different things of me. For example, now I’m writing a new novel, but it’s completely different from The Unworthy and from Tender is a Flesh because I’m using all the words that only Argentine people use. All the slang, all the insults, all of it. The plot is asking me for that. In the case of The Unworthy, the plot and the protagonist asked me for a more refined way of writing. She’s really refined, and I used a lot of poetic resources. What I wanted to do there is talk about horrible things in a beautiful way, with beautiful writing. The act of writing is a salvation.
When I finished writing this book, I started reading a book from a Cuban writer named Reinaldo Arenas. He wrote a book called Before Night Falls. He was persecuted by Fidel Castro because he was gay. His book is about his experiences; it’s his testimony. It was incredible, because throughout everything he was going through, he kept on writing. He was being persecuted, and he kept writing knowing that they could get him faster because he was writing novels, so he hid them. He gave the novels to his friends. The writing of those books saved him. Art and literature save our spirits and increase our imagination. We need imagination not only to tell stories, but even to cook a good plate of food, to build a bridge, to build whatever you want to build. You need imagination. It is absolutely essential to read.
IM: I do think it’s necessary for every single part of life. It helps you understand different walks of life and how other people think. It helps us grow empathy as well as imagination.
AB: You can have a silent dialogue with people that lived 200 years ago. It’s a way to connect. It’s like they’re talking to you.
IM: Lastly, who are you reading now?
AB: One is a book written by an Argentine writer named Ricardo Romero called El conserje y la eternidad. It’s about a vampire in Buenos Aires. I’m also reading Answered Prayers by Truman Capote, and a book of poetry called La morada imposible by Susana Thénon.
IM: Thank you so much for joining me today.
AB: Thank you.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.