Colombian author Gloria Susana Esquivel said the American Dream has become an American nightmare, describing a United States where migrants are persecuted, killed in the street, and left feeling like second-class citizens. She made the remarks during a visit to the Feria Internacional del Libro de Lima, where she appeared to meet Peruvian readers.
Esquivel, 41, spoke in connection with her novel Contradeseo, published in 2024. The book follows a Colombian woman named Silvia who is rebuilding her life after a breakup while sharing a home with two friends, Teresa and Javier. The unnamed country where the story is set carries references that point to the United States, and Silvia’s separation from her partner also marks a rupture with her dream of citizenship and belonging.
The author, who spent three years living in New York, said migrants who arrived in the United States in the 1960s and 1980s found a country with social welfare and real prospects for upward mobility. She said that is no longer the case, describing the current American economy as troubled, the country as being in constant war, and the president as one who pursues migrants.
She said living in the United States is an experience of being present and absent at the same time, of realising you are a second-class citizen simply because you lack the paperwork that grants access to healthcare and decent work. She added that people tend to think of migration as a promise of happiness, but the reality is different.
A novel born from a short story
Esquivel said Contradeseo began as a short story she wrote in 2017. When she finished it, she felt her characters still had more to tell, and the project grew into a novel. Reader responses, she noted, vary significantly depending on where she presents the book. At the Lima fair, she said she was surprised to find audiences focused on the theme of surrogacy, which appears briefly in the work.
The author also spoke about her choice to write about desire, love, and female friendship rather than violence or armed conflict, themes she said tend to dominate the work of male Colombian writers. She said she had not always felt certain she belonged in literature, because the writers she saw as models were men writing about wars. Over time she decided she wanted to approach her country’s conflicts from a different direction, through the body, the world, and friendships between women.
Cinematic ambitions
Esquivel said she drew on films featuring trios and enclosed spaces when writing the novel, citing Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande a part, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers as inspirations. She said the novel was conceived with cinema and theatre in mind and that it would be her dream to see it become a film, though no such opportunity has arrived yet.
She also spoke warmly of Peruvian literature, naming Blanca Varela, Cesar Vallejo, Jose Watanabe, and Gabriela Wiener as lasting influences on both her writing and her way of engaging with reality.
Esquivel holds a master’s degree in creative writing from New York University. Her previous works include the poetry collection El lado salvaje (2016), the novel Animales del fin del mundo (2017), and the nonfiction book Dinamita! Mujeres rebeldes en la Colombia del siglo XX (2020).
