Michelle Roche Rodríguez is a Venezuelan writer who has lived in Spain for several years. She combines her face as a storyteller with essays, journalism and literary criticism. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the Autonomous University of madrid and a MA in Philosophy and Literature from New York University she.
Malasangre (Anagrama, 2020), a very special historical moment, the «twenties, the culmination of the Gómez dictatorship. The ‘roaring twenties’ gave me the opportunity to present Diana Gutiérrez as a vampire and show the beginning of the oil economy in my country, which was also the beginning of our ancestral oil rentiers,” the author admits. earthly, parasitic, vampiric».
The protagonist of the novel suffers from hematophagy, which is badly transmitted by his father, a random character. However, Diana “has to be a ‘good’ woman. At that time, women had to bring in virgins for arranged marriages that functioned as financial transactions. If a woman’s honor was questioned, the paternity of her children could also be questioned.
The vampire figure appears as an inspiring model for Malasangre. The author has been a reader of the Gothic genre since his youth. To model Diana, “I based myself on Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story Carmilla and Valentine Penrose’s novel The Bloody Countess.” He also seeks the reflection of actress Theda Bara in There Was a Fool (Frank Powell, 1915) to characterize the protagonist who at one point in the novel points out: “If I had to. It would be okay to turn into a monster in order to be free. Michelle Roche Rodríguez is concerned with her characters “overcoming their victim status to fight their oppressor.”
Concerning this idea, we recall Adorno’s quote: “The glorification of the female character entails the humiliation of anyone who possesses it.” Venezuelan writer under these terrible words both his novel and article My mother, you are in legend. The purpose of the article in question is “to show that behind virgin motherhood there is a tremendous conceptual device designed to exclude women from society by promoting such qualities as common sense, dignity and sacrifice.” As the author admits, Malasangre “was written under these convictions, for Diana’s struggle is to leave the private sphere where her family wants to control her and take the reins of her life freely.”
In recent years, a number of Latin American writers have emerged with great interest and narrative power. Think Mariana Enriquez, Guadalupe Nettel, Mónica Ojeda, or the author of Malasangre. Michelle Roche says, “Spanish Americans have devoted themselves to writing for centuries, the difference is that we are no longer censored or it’s less common for people to believe our books are of inferior quality simply because they are women. We lost the work of many writers who would have been invaluable in the 19th century because the family burden fell on them.
As future projects, the Venezuelan author is working on a book of short stories and a novel that arise “from questioning the space occupied by ghosts in our loneliness and the possibility of thinking about morality and free will beyond the duality of good and evil.