Guest post written by Los Monstruos: Rooster and the Dancing Diablo author Diana López
Writing from Corpus Christi Texas, Diana López is the author of numerous middle grade novels. She currently serves as the president of the Texas Institute of Letters, an honor society of Texas writers. She retired after a 28-year career in education at both the middle grade and college levels, but she still loves wearing her “teacher hat” as a mentor for organizations such as AWP and Las Musas.
A thrilling follow-up to Felice and the Wailing Woman that explores the Texas-Mexico border myth of the Dancing Devil.
I grew up with two versions of the devil, the dark force of the Bible and the well-dressed trickster of South Texas legends. In the most popular story, a young girl is warned by her parents, “Don’t leave the house. It’s dangerous out there.” Of course, she leaves, sneaking out a window to join her friends at a dancehall. Then a handsome man asks her to dance. He’s wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a fedora. He’s an exceptional dancer, leading her in a tango. She’s having a wonderful time, but when she looks down, she notices that he has chicken feet. That’s when she realizes she’s been dancing with the devil. It’s too late, for at that moment, he begins to twirl her faster and faster, conjuring a cloud of yellow, sulfuric smoke. When the dance ends and the smoke clears, the girl is gone, never to be seen again.
That’s where the legend ends, but I can’t help wondering—where did the young girl go?
This is the question that inspires my latest book, Los Monstruos: Rooster and the Dancing Diablo. It is part of a three-book series featuring popular monsters from the Texas-Mexico border—the wailing woman known as la Llorona, the dancing diablo, and the owl-witch known as la lechuza.
What has always irked me when I heard legends and fairy tales was the big gender divide. A boy sneaks out to go on an adventure and he’s a hero, but when a girl does the same, she’s a victim. That’s why in my reimagining of the story, both girls and boys disappear. Rooster, the dancing diablo’s son, goes on a journey to find them, but he’s aided by his best friends, a squirrel and two very resourceful girls.
I’ve always been fascinated by the lotería card featuring el diablito. Against a yellow backdrop is a red man with horns and black goatee. He carries a pitchfork. He has a pointy tail, one hoof, and one chicken foot. I like imagining how to make shoes for his feet or the clomp and scratch of his footsteps. He is truly un monstruo.
But this image also points to another great divide in the stories I often heard, characters who are either virtuous heroes or irredeemable villains. Nobody is thoroughly good or bad in my experience, a complexity I try to capture in my novel. Sure, the devils in my Rooster book cause a lot of mischief, but they also fall in love. They do what they think is best for their children.
This is where I find the most joy in fiction, both in reading and writing it. I love stories that find the meeting place of perceived opposites. The town of Tres Leches may be fictional and the protagonist only half human, but his experiences and insights are very much rooted in the real world.
