Michelle Roche Rodríguez is a Venezuelan author who has spent several years in Spain. She blends 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 Master of Arts in Philosophy and Literature from New York University.
Malasangre, published by Anagrama in 2020, captures a pivotal historical moment—the 1920s, the twilight of a Gómez dictatorship, and the rise of an oil economy that reshaped a nation. The author notes that the roaring twenties provided a backdrop to present Diana Gutiérrez as a vampire, signaling the emergence of oil wealth and the complex web of ancestral oil rentiers that accompanied it. The work grounds its spectral imagery in earthly, parasitic, and vampiric strains of power.
The novel’s protagonist grapples with hematophagy, a trait inherited from a distant father who remains elusive. Diana is also compelled to conform to the expectations of a society that imposes rigid gender roles. Women were often required to contribute virginal brides through marriages framed as financial alliances. If a woman’s honor came into question, paternal certainty over her children could be challenged as well.
The vampire figure serves as a muse for Malasangre. Roche Rodríguez has long been a reader of Gothic fiction, and Diana’s construction draws on that lineage. The author cites Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and Valentine Penrose’s The Bloody Countess as influences, alongside a visual echo from the era of Theda Bara in There Was a Fool. At one point in the narrative, the protagonist contemplates the possibility of becoming a monster to gain freedom. Roche Rodríguez focuses on characters who move beyond victimhood to resist oppression.
Michelle Roche Rodríguez and the work Malasangre invite readers to reflect on how female power is depicted and perceived in culture. The author challenges the notion of women as passive holders of virtue and suggests a path toward autonomy that emerges through confronting coercive structures. In this light, the novel engages with critical discourse on gender and representation, echoing broader debates about the place of women in historical and literary narratives.
The close readings and theoretical threads in the book resonate with Adorno’s warning about the politics of female archetypes. The author situates her fiction and accompanying critique within a framework that interrogates how motherhood, virtue, and sacrifice can function as social devices that marginalize women. Malasangre follows Diana as she seeks to leave the private sphere controlled by family expectations and to seize agency in her own life.
In recent years a new wave of Latin American writers has attracted critical attention for its narrative power. Figures such as Mariana Enríquez, Guadalupe Nettel, and Mónica Ojeda are part of this movement, as is Roche Rodríguez herself. The author observes that Spanish-speaking authors have long contributed richly to world literature, and that modern publishers are increasingly open to works by women without the same level of censorship once assumed as a given. The historical burden carried by women writers has diminished, allowing a broader spectrum of voices to emerge from the family and social spheres they once inhabited.
Looking ahead, the Venezuelan author is pursuing a collection of short stories and a novel that explore how ghosts inhabit our solitude. These future projects promise to probe questions of morality and free will beyond binary notions of good and evil.