Seeing Myself in The Lost Dreamer

The power of authentic representation in art is subtle, but profound. As a high-schooler in New York City, Ruby Moran was struck by the depiction of Mesoamerican themes in the story and images of The Lost Dreamer. She wasn't used to seeing her heritage reflected in the popular fantasy genre. As she dove into the story, she also found refreshing depictions of womanhood. Moran interviewed the novel's author, Lizz Huerta, for this piece to better understand her motivations, inspirations, and hopes for her work. 

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Lizz Huerta’s novel The Lost Dreamer guides its readers through a fantastical, Mesoamerica-inspired world. Through her characters and their interwoven stories, the novel uncovers Huerta’s beliefs about our modern world and her insights into diverse human experience. 

In August 2024, I had the honor of interviewing Huerta, to hear first-hand the motivations that resulted in the novel.

The cover was immediately striking; in stark contrast to the other fantasy novels that sat on the shelf, it featured Mesoamerican indigenous aesthetics and elements of fantasy surrounding the face of a brown woman at its center. 

It was the first time I had seen my own ethnic roots reflected in the fantasy genre - my favorite - and its pull was magnetic.

Huerta said to me, “I wanted to write a book that teenage me would’ve been like ‘Oh my gosh, I see myself.  I see my people. I see my ancestors. I see these emotional landscapes that are familiar to me.’ That was really important to me and I wanted to do it in fantasy.” 

She explained that her Mexican-Puerto Rican heritage informed her exploration of overlapping identities, and similarly, her life in Puerto Rico formed her sense of a ‘borderland.' Further, her childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness moved her to think from an early age “outside of societal norms that are widely accepted.”

“I’m grateful that I’ve had this unique working experience,” she said. “I think it’s allowed me to enter into my creativity and writing in a way that's really unique to other published authors in the world.”

A Peek Under the Cover

The Lost Dreamer follows the story of two women - Indir and Saya - born with the gift of Dreaming that allows them to access a dimension beyond physical reality, connect with spirits, and receive visions of the future. Their connection to the Dream proves pivotal in safeguarding their world as the stories’ antagonist emerges to threaten their way of life. 

Indir and Saya are raised in completely different ways. Indir is a trained Dreamer in the city of Alcanzeh, descended from a long line of seers, taught to channel her use of the Dream to see visions pertaining to the happenings and future of her city. Saya carries the same gift, but she was not raised with the same traditions or training as Indir. She can Dream freely, communicating with spirits and using any knowledge she receives to aid people in the real world. 

The novel follows these two protagonists as they navigate both meaningful personal changes as well as political turmoil as the cruel king, Alcan, takes over Alcanzeh and begins to expand his rule over the lands beyond it.  

Pioneering Representation in the Fantasy Genre

While the plot was of course captivating, The Lost Dreamer was, above all, a refreshing read. Huerta prominently featured imagery that is otherwise scarce in the genre. The story weaves together themes of womanhood, Mesoamerican culture, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships into a tapestry of imaginative commentary. 

The characters face a looming challenge: violent change. Alcan’s insistence on changing Alcanzeh’s centuries-long traditions threatens to tip the world’s natural balance and harmony, and the effects of the changes he’s rapidly enacting ripple throughout the realm. 

Womanhood 

One of the dimensions in which The Lost Dreamer is especially rich is in its portrayal of womanhood, offering varying glimpses into women’s experiences and relationships with one another.

Between the two protagonists and the host of supporting characters, Huerta elegantly captures a range of female experiences. 

The story opens with Indir and we are quickly introduced to her two sisters, mother, and twin aunts. She lives in a matriarchal home, deeply motivated by a duty to serve the city of Alcanzeh. We hear their chatter: their disagreements about the fate of the city, their protectiveness of one another. 

Indir trusts and confides in her sisters, Delu and Zeri, throughout the story. She is closest with her youngest sister, Delu, the pair consistently walking and talking together as Indir struggles with her secrets.There are moments where all three sisters come together; in the novel’s first scene, the family is preparing to meet their new king, Alcan, and the sisters help each other get dressed and braid each other’s hair. Their sisterhood transcends their responsibilities as the city’s Dreamers, truly making them one of the best trios in the story. 

Indir lives in a matriarchy, her mother in particular is seen as a leader within Alcanzeh’s community. Indir and her mother have a good relationship, but it isn’t as tightly knit as Indir’s connection to her sisters. They clearly deeply care about each other, but there is nuance. Her mother’s heavy responsibilities to the city and her duty to protect the citizens as well as her daughters has made her reluctant to show outward affection very often. Though, as seen during their farewell before Indir sets off on her journey, there is still love between them as mother and daughter. 

Saya, on the other hand, didn’t experience such affections until later in her story. 

She lived a nomadic life with her caretaker, Celay, who exploited Saya’s power to take advantage of the people in the places they stayed.. 

The multitude of expressions of female relationships was refreshing. We not only saw love and protection, but also tension and disdain. Women and their relationships with one another are often depicted as a monolith. Whether the relationship is toxic or nurturing, it’s typically the same storyline repeated over and over, or the nurturing/toxic party gets faded into the background as a part of the protagonist’s tragic backstory. Huerta’s depiction revealed how multifaceted these relationships can actually be. This gives her characters a feeling of being more real.

“Women are the beating heart of the family, and I’m sure that's true in many many other families. And I just wanted to center that and center the complicated relationship between sisters, and mothers, and aunts and I wanted to have a toxic mother relationship.” 

Huerta grew up in a family of matriarchs. She experienced being in an environment powered by women and wanted to express that in her novel. She did not have a toxic relationship with her mother, but she felt like it was still an important dynamic to depict.

This is where Saya’s relationship with Celay makes its mark on the readers. 

“I’ve had a lot of readers tell me that the relationship between Saya and Celay was really triggering and hard for them to read but they do love how she becomes empowered through the action of the book and is able to get out of that situation.”

Huerta represented womanhood and the relationships women find within their communities in such a vibrant and authentic way that readers can relate to or learn from any of the story’s characters about the female experience. 

Loss and Remembrance

The theme of loss factors heavily into the story. Every character experiences loss and grief in some shape or form. Indir is a prime example. 

Indir grew up in the sanctuary of her temple in Alcanzeh, surrounded by her family and well respected in her community. When Alcan’s new rule makes everything turn on its head, it becomes Indir’s duty to venture away from the only home she has ever known. 

Along the way, she lost her powers, her aunts, her city, and eventually everything she held close. 

At one point, she even loses her power of Dreaming, something she had built her entire identity around.

“I begged the Twin Serpents, wherever they were, to bring my gift back to me. I had to Dream. I didn’t know who I was without it.” (Quote from novel)

She was left in a changing environment; one by one, the tethers that anchored her sense of self were forcefully removed by circumstance. 

However, she was able to alchemize a new purpose out of her loss, filling her once again with resilience and determination as she set off to fulfill her duty of finding the Lost Dreamer. She found an alternative way to serve her community and her family.

The novel is based on Mesoamerica and the theme of losing one’s home and culture is prevalent throughout the story. Indigenous people have struggled for centuries with a loss of identity and loved ones as the effects of colonialism persist within their communities. Colonialism caused the erasure of many sacred practices and killed thousands of people. Alcan and his insistence on changing all of Alcanzeh’s traditions and values reflects these events, and Indir’s story is a testament to what many indigenous people have had to go through in their wake. 

Readers feel Indir’s pain in its raw form. The novel offers a creative and approachable way for those who are unfamiliar with Latin American and Indigenous culture to empathize with our values and struggles. 

Huerta did an amazing job at bringing these themes, and many more, to life in her story. Her characters’ journeys throughout the novel help widen her readers’ perspectives on the world around them, inviting us to think beyond the boundaries we may have taken for granted. 

“I’m hoping it expands what American literature is. You know that American literature isn't just the United States, the American literature is of the Americas. This entire landmass that we’re living on called Turtle Island or whatever other words, the Americas isn’t this bordered place, the Americas is this vast landscape stretching from pole to pole full of thousands of cultures and stories and ways of relating, and that our idea of American literature is so small and based on these imperialist borders as opposed to this giant landmass that we’re all living on, and you know some of us have been living here ancestrally for thousands of years.” 

Hopefully this story broadens horizons of all its readers, as it broadened mine. This book was an enlivening read; it was truly difficult to put down. It is definitely a book I recommend to anyone looking for something to love and learn from. 

All opinions expressed here are solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s employer.