“The story Bernal Díaz del Castillo writes in the Historia Verdadera is of the Spaniards landing in Veracruz, their travel inland through Mexico, their entry into the capital at the heart of the Aztec Empire, and the subsequent fall of that empire, all of which is echoed in the language he uses to record his story. Terms from Nahuatl or other languages of the place blend with Homeric narrative structures, Aztec concepts appropriated by the Spanish, Biblical references, theological and mythological references, political alignments and machinations, etc. The language that composes this text is itself an encounter narrative. Rendering it in English, I wanted to play with creating a form like a translation draft, a fragment that exists in a state of possibility before choice, thereby recreating the complexities of another type of encounter—between a text and its reader.”
—Chloe Garcia Roberts