The University of Arizona Press
October 16, 2025
Homero Aridjis’s novel, Carne De Dios, vividly translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts, tells the story of the motley crew of bohemians, researchers, and holy fools, both real and imagined, who descend on the town of Huautla de Jiménez searching for inspiration, distraction, and salvation in the sacred mushrooms. These seekers melt in and out of a narrative infiltrated by the slipstream logic of dreams. As John Lennon plays jazz on the patio of the Hotel Grande, Juan Rulfo contemplates horror movies, and Allen Ginsberg recites mantras at Philip Lamantia’s wedding, María Sabina’s life is increasingly thrown into turmoil. Today, we interview translator Chloe Garcia Roberts.
How did you meet Carne de Dios author Homer Aridjis and come to translate this novel?
I met Homero by way of his daughter, Chloe Aridjis, who I interviewed regarding a translation of her father’s memoir, The Child Poet. The magazine publishing the interview asked if her father would have something they could publish as well, and Homero sent me a copy of his newest novel in thanks. I fell in love with the novel and the focus it gave to María Sabina, a figure I’d always been fascinated with, and asked if I could translate it. Thanks to an NEA grant and UA Press, it all ended up coming together.
Tell us about the special friendship between Homer Aridjis, his wife Betty, and the real María Sabina, who is the main character of this book.
Homero talks about his personal relationship in his afterward in the novel, but the basic story is that when he and Betty found out that Sabina was gravely ill, they brought her to Mexico City to live with them and arranged for her to get medical treatment. They have some wonderful pictures of their family with Sabina taken then, and Homero has confided in me that much of her words in the book are direct quotes from their conversations during that time.
How do you think your work as a poet influences your work as a translator?
My work as a poet and as a translator are inseparable. I always need to have a project in both genres going so that I can move around as the day takes me. The word-work which is the foundation of translation has also given me a more expansive and deeper understanding of the English language, which is the language I write poetry in. I think I am a better poet for being a translator and better translator for being a poet.
Thinking about his novel, can you provide an example or two of phrases or concepts that are clear in Spanish, but difficult to put into English words? How did you find the right words?
Well I had a lot of talks with Homero about how to describe the landscape of Huautla de Jiménez. The word in Spanish for the geography there is cerro, not a high mountain but a little more than a hill, and given that this is a geography very familiar to Homero he did not like the word hill as a translation at all. I ended up using the word mountain in most cases, but I tried to use adjectives or other words throughout to convey that these were low mountains or high hills. There were many terms of words that came up similarly as I worked, words that were so completely themselves in Spanish that we ended up leaving them in their original forms, vela, the word Sabina used for her mushroom ceremonies, or even Carne de Dios, the name of one of the mushrooms she used and the title of the book.
There was a lot of work put into the poetry of Sabina and also of the author, but that was fun, a lot of reading aloud to myself, making sure that there was as much music in the translation as there is in the original.
This novel takes place in 1957. Why do you think it will appeal to modern readers?
Well I think there will be appeal on several different levels. One, Sabina was a conduit to a knowledge that had been private up until that point, and this novel is the story of that moment of encounter, a moment that is still reverberating today. Two, she is considered by many to be Mexico’s greatest poet and yet she remains largely unknown. This book pays homage to her influence on the burgeoning cultural movement of the 1960s in the U.S. and Europe. Finally, there is a resurgence of American citizens living in Mexico since the pandemic, so there will be echoes here of the clash of cultures going on right now.
About the Translator
Chloe Garcia Roberts is a poet and translator from Spanish and Chinese. She is the author of a book of poetry, The Reveal, which was published as part of Noemi Press’s Akrilica Series for innovative Latino writing, and Fire Eater: A Translator’s Theology. Her translations include Li Shangyin’s Derangements of My Contemporaries: Miscellaneous Notes, which was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and a collected poems of Li Shangyin published in the New York Review Books / Poets series. She lives outside Boston and works as deputy editor of the Harvard Review and as a lecturer of poetry at MIT.
