The Queen of Water

Co-written with Maria Virginia Farinango, Laura Resau’s The Queen of Water will enchant, enlighten, and embolden you. Virginia’s story begins in an impoverished Ecuadoran village where at 7 years old, she is taken from her indigenous family to be an unpaid servant for a family of mestizos, Ecuador’s middle & upper classes who claim to be descendants of the Spanish conquerors.   While Virginia quickly becomes accustomed to the comforts of her employers’ lifestyle, the fierce beatings, daily humiliation, verbal and psychological abuse, and the hard work make her life unbearable at times. During the 8 years that Virginia is with these people, she waivers between feeling a loving connection to them and a painful recognition that they will never see her as more than a dirty Indian servant. Eventually, Virginia finds the courage to escape the family, but when she tries to go home to her village, she realizes that she doesn’t belong there either.  Unsure of her place and caught between two seemingly irreconcilable cultures, Virginia must discover within herself the ability and the strength to create a new world for herself.

The Queen of Water is a remarkable story, based on the life and experiences of Maria Virginia Farinango.  In the 1980’s she was one of thousands of indigenous children who were taken from their parents and forced into a life of servitude.  In the face of a culture and “employers” who tell her that she is less than human, she continues to believe that she is worth more than anyone expects, and that she can choose to have the life she knows she deserves. Resau does an amazing job taking Farinango’s experiences and developing a smooth, easy to read, relatable story.  She skillfully weaves in a complexity of themes and through Virginia’s experiences, thoughts, and reflections, makes them both thought-provoking and accessible to the reader.  I certainly left The Queen of Water with a deeper understanding of the continued effects of European colonialism on indigenous people and a new-found appreciation for a woman who is using her own life to better the lives of others.

• Posted by Cori