Alex Brown Reviews Sordidez by E.G. Condé
Sordidez, E.G. Condé (Stelliform 978-1-77768-236-1, $16.00, 141pp, tp) August 2023. Cover by Paulina Niño.
In Sordidez, the debut novella from Taínofuturist author E.G. Condé, we meet three Latinx people attempting to survive in the aftermath of colonial warfare and climate disasters. Vero, a trans man, lives in Puerto Rico, a place ravaged by American disinterest, global manipulation, and devastating hurricanes. Using his knowledge of his Taíno ancestral traditions, he helps decolonize Borikén, the Taíno name for Puerto Rico. Later, in the role of journalist, he visits the Yucatán which is suffering from an ecological disaster unleashed by a long-gone dictator. There he encounters the Loba Roja, a figure from Maya folklore made real. She is, in a way, Vero’s Maya parallel, and the two of them work together to reclaim their Indigenous roots in the face of a global empire that wants to smother them.
The cover copy focuses solely on Vero, but he is not the only protagonist. His plot bookends the novella, but two other figures share the narrative landscape. In the Yucatán, Vero meets an older man known only as Abuelo who suffers from the dementia-like side effects of the Androvirus. He lives in a community of other Androvirus survivors, each in varying stages of the disease, run by Doña Margarita. When Abuelo is approached by a mysterious woman, Aleja, with a potential cure for the Androvirus, he leaps at the chance of recovering his past. What he finds is not what he or Margarita hoped for. Margarita and Aleja, both bearing the weight of their own personal tragedies from the war, must decide what to do with their rage and grief. Can they forgive? Should they forgive? Can they move forward and offer a second chance to those who have caused harm? What if the person has done nothing to earn that chance? And who decides how much is enough?
Condé packs a lot into 141 pages. One element I found especially fascinating was how the sordidos functioned as a literal manifestation of how colonialism steals histories and stories, forcing us to build something new from whatever scraps we can find. Abuelo lives in a cloud of nothing, only existing in the present with no past on which to build a future. Margarita offers him and other sordidos a chance to forge something new on what’s left of the old. If Abuelo represents the effects of colonialism, then Margarita represents the diaspora. Those of us in the diaspora have a permanent longing for a home we never knew coupled with a sense of connection and community with the new cultures that formed in the wake of colonial violence.
I had been unfamiliar with the concept of Taínofuturism until this story, but what an introduction. Condé is one of the genre’s cocreators. Much like Indigenous Futurism, it deals with imagined realities where Indigenous cultures, traditions, and perspectives are centered, but Taínofuturism specifically looks at Borikén. Although Sordidez spends time in the Yucatán, it begins and ends with efforts by Puerto Rican people to decolonize and re-Taínoize, so to speak, Borikén.
In the acknowledgements, Condé notes that Sordidez originally began life as a short story that was later expanded into a novella, and there are tiny moments where, to me, it still feels a bit underdeveloped, where the story has been expanded but without quite enough depth in the foundation to support the expansion. But overall, it’s a strong story with a well-developed plot and characters I haven’t seen before. I’d love to see what Condé could do with a full-length Taínofuturist novel.
Sordidez is a vividly realized story about colonialism, climate change, and identity. It is a powerful yet honest look at the world and our responsibilities to it, both as Indigenous people and people living on stolen land.
Alex Brown is a librarian, author, historian, and Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, young adult fiction, librarianship, and Black history.
This review and more like it in the August 2023 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
