An Immigrant's Tale

The Butterfly’s Ring: A Letter to the Ancestors, is a contemporary epic novel written in lucid surrealism, a new literary style by Mariel Masque.

Novel Pitch

Written in a unique Mestizx voice and narrated by an omnipotent narrator, Consciousness, The Butterfly’s Ring delivers the trailblazing allegoric journey of René Medina. The river of memory flashfloods her conscious when her mother and only living relative, Libertad, dies. In the process, René relives the bloody revolution where anyone who resists perishes. An imaginative tomboy who follows blue butterflies, she finds comfort in the stories her mother and her grandfather share while military tanks, missile heads, machine guns and pools of blood swirl in perpetual chaos around their home.

What Inspired The Butterfly’s Ring

Cubans of mixed-roots, my parents and I, sought asylum as political refugees in the United States in 1961 and moved to Venezuela in 1963. Born in Havana and raised between the U.S. and Venezuela, I am a first-generation immigrant and former refugee currently living in the United States. My writing expresses the resilience, strength, and dedication of ancestors seldom fully explored in writing. It is a homage to Cuban immigrants with mix native, African, Gitano, Muslim and Arab roots. Todos los caminos llegan a Cuba!

As a Caribbean Mestiza, the need to defragment my identity inspired me to ask a personal question. What does it mean to be Cuban? The name Cuba can be traced to the Taíno language word “ciba” meaning mountain or stone and to ancient Arabic languages from the Islamic world where the terms cuba or coba mean a mosque with a cupola or a tomb.

Most writing about the Caribbean pays little attention to our Gitano, Arab and Muslim ancestors who migrated to the island. Taking 23 years of research, The Butterfly’s Ring reinterprets the diaspora to include these often-silenced voices. In this surreal tapestry where consciousness serves as the omnipotent narrator, identity undergoes constant reinvention, timelessness displaces linear thinking, and borders are somewhat ambiguous.

In Search of A Literary Agent

The Butterfly’s Ring is the first novel in a series. Fluttering its iridescent blue wings, the book is actively searching for a literary agent. If interested, please contact the author.

Mariel Masque Copyright 2017
All Rights (Including International Rights)