By Laura Zornosa
When Diego dies by suicide, he leaves his sister with a sheaf of questions: Why? What, if anything, could she have done differently? Should she move back “home” to Mexico, where she flies with his ashes? Is there even a home left for her there? Or should she try to stay in Spain, which has rejected her with resounding racism and discrimination?
The story is told by an unnamed narrator, a 21-year-old woman who emigrated from Mexico to Spain with her younger brother, Diego. This is the devastating opening of Eating Ashes (Ceniza en la boca), written by Brenda Navarro and translated by Megan McDowell. The novel is being adapted for film by Diego Luna (director of La Máquina, actor in Y Tu Mamá También).
It wants better content.
What do we lose when we leave home?
Migration is as natural and everlasting as the sun. Billions of animals and thousands of species do it every year, moving from one place to another in search of a better life. Immigration, the human equivalent, is already one of the defining domestic stories (and moral compasses) of the year. This is almost another type of imperial boomerang—migration from a colonized place back to the colonizing country. It’s a relatively new subject for American media (the author is Mexican and lives in Spain, like her narrator), and it’s urgent.
But in Navarro’s capable hands, Eating Ashes is far from didactic. Instead, the book reads like a stunned stream of consciousness, flitting back and forth between the past and the present, between Spain and Mexico, desperately trying to make sense of things. These are not chapters, per se; they’re dazed meditations.
“Ever since we got to Spain we’d been like amputees with no diagnosis. Like we were missing something, but everyone denied it,” Navarro writes. “Well, Mexico, I thought. They’ve cut off our Mexico. But not Mexico the country, Mexico as a yearning.”
Eating Ashes breaks our hearts, but doesn’t put them back together again. It does, however, carefully cradle the pieces.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org.
Fast facts: ‘Eating Ashes’ by Brenda Navarro
Navarro’s novel doesn’t solve grief or immigration—it just holds the shattered pieces with devastating care.
- Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro, translated by Megan McDowell
- Publish date: January 20, 2026
- 240 pages
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