You know when you start a book, and you can just feel that you’re going to love it? Yeah, that’s how I felt about How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland.
This book reached into the fissure in my chest, cracked it open further, and filled it with fresh soil and flowers.
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe is a novel that explores concepts of love, identity, feminism, nature, religion, family, and grief. It is a book that encourages introspection and discussion of important topics that need to be amplified in our society.
Gilliand’s writing style is immersive, powerful, and soft. The novel features chapter titles, and they strengthen the sense of unity and cohesion that arise from the recurring metaphors and symbols––it is clear that everything is intentional. The characters were multi dimensional, and I felt as if I knew them. The author does an amazing job at being intentional about when your feelings reflect those of the main character. There is this fluctuation of hurt, hate, frustration, curiosity, and joy––among other emotions.
I couldn’t help but relate this novel to a text I read for one of my philosophy classes last year. The piece was “Feminism is Sensational” by Sara Ahmed. It is a beautiful work of writing that explores many important relationships, namely the connection of experience, body, and memory. While How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe includes romance, the romance is ultimately enhanced when we analyze the connection Moon has to herself, the earth, the universe, and other people. Our bodies store memories through experience––things that have occurred to us in the past or even other women generations ago––and the way we react to the world and internalize our existence is dependent on the body and these interactions. This is a theme that both the piece by Ahmed and the novel by Gilliland explore.
I love the way Gilliand uses nature to parallel the body. Trees, water, flowers––anything in the natural world––are depicted as sentient beings, and the body is essentially nature personified. This idea that our bodies have history and are their own land is crucial to altering our understanding of ourselves and the world.
This connection to body and nature is a means through which Moon Fuentez learns to redefine herself. It relates to Ana Mendieta, the person featured in the epigraph. I was so excited when I started this book and read her name on that page because she is an artist I am deeply inspired by. Ana Mendieta is a Cuban-American artist whose work consists of performance art, sculpting, painting, and video. Mendieta utilizes the body and natural elements in her pieces in a way that assesses the relationship between the body and earth. I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with her work for it is evocative and provides an enhancement of culture and feminist thought.
The novel deals with the issue of fatphobia and implicitly discusses the simultaneous dehumanization that occurs when people don’t see or value someone as a human or when they only find value through the hypersexualization and exotification of their body.
The novel captures the complexity of family dynamics, specifically in terms of a toxic household, and morality. We can begin to understand why someone does what they do, but knowing all of that never excuses or justifies someone’s actions, yet sometimes we can’t help but want to love people who don’t deserve our love.
Religion is another theme that is prevalent in the novel, specifically how it can be morphed into something to fulfill a harmful agenda. The novel explores the ways religion can used as a manipulative force in relation to family, concepts of sex/purity, and other areas of life––and the savior complex that comes with all this. Through the redefinition of herself, Moon also begins to redefine and reshape her relationship with religion.
The topic of religion also causes the reader to question the role the “American Dream” plays in this toxicity––the way many immigrant families are made to believe in this illusion and feel that they have to forsake their language, culture, etc. to achieve it. The significance that generational trauma has on minority groups was strongly alluded to. That coupled with the stigmatization of mental illness opens up an important conversation about creating spaces where people can freely seek and feel comfortable asking for help.
Hopeful tones are continuously weaved throughout the novel with themes of nature, and it is a story that will bring comfort to many people.
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe deals with delicate topics, so I suggest searching for a full list of content warnings. Some CW’s include: parental abuse, bullying, trauma, religious themes, fatphobia, panic attacks, death.