FRIDA IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALTHOUGH EVENTS IN MEXICAN HISTORY and in Frida’s life provide the general framework, many incidents and characters portrayed here are the author’s inventions. For example, I have found no evidence that Frida destroyed her doll collection or that she seduced a fifteen-year-old Esmeralda student (or any other minor). Although Frida’s bisexuality is well documented, Leticia Santiago is my own creation. Although many of Frida’s biographers mention her younger sister, Cristina, I have reinvented the youngest Kahlo girl to make her a perspicacious witness to Frida’s life. Frida’s last hours have long been shrouded in mystery. In 1953 she tried to kill herself, and some of her biographers entertain the possibility that her death in 1954 was, in fact, a suicide. However, there is no evidence that Cristina played any part in that event. She died February 7, 1964.
My intention in writing Frida was to capture the essence of Frida Kahlo’s personality, not to document her life. I was particularly interested in what it might be like to be the unexceptional sister of such an exceptional woman. The rivalry between Frida and Cristina for Diego’s attention is factual, and the psychological repercussions of the affair leave ample room for conjecture. More broadly, I was concerned with some of the underlying issues in human relationships—in particular, our seemingly limitless capacity to do harm, even to those we sincerely love.
I have relied on a number of primary and secondary sources for information about Frida Kahlo. Frida’s letters (Cartas apasionadas, compiled by Martha Zamora, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995) and her diary (The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, New York: Harry N. Abrams and Mexico, D.F.: La Vaca Independiente, 1995) provided me with insight into the painter’s character. (However, the letters included in this novel are all fictional.) I also garnered information from Hayden Herrera’s stellar biography (Frida, New York: Harper and Row, 1983), as well as from studies by Raquel Tibol (Frida Kahlo: Una vida abierta, Mexico, D.F.: Oasis, 1983; English trans. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1993), Rauda Jamis (Frida Kahlo, Mexico, D.F.: Diana, 1987), Martha Zamora (Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1990), Sarah M. Lowe (Frida Kahlo, New York: Universe, 1991), J.M.G. Le Cézio (Diego y Frida, Mexico, D.F.: Diana, 1995), and Terri Hardin (Frida Kahlo: A Modern Master, New York: Smithmark, 1997). Another source of data was Frida’s Fiestas (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1994), a collection of Frida’s favorite recipes compiled by Guadalupe Rivera (daughter of Diego Rivera and Lupe Marín) and Marie-Pierre Colle. Drawing the Line (London: Verso, 1989), by Oriana Baddeley and Valerie Fraser, and Textured Lives (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1992), by Claudia Schaefer, broadened my general understanding of Latin American women artists. Many books on Diego Rivera are available. I found Diego’s own My Art, My Life (New York: Dover, 1960), and Bertram D. Wolfe’s The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera (Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1969) particularly valuable.
I wish to thank my husband, Mauro, for his encouragement and undying faith in this project. I am also indebted to Hermann Lademann, of The Overlook Press, for his brilliant editing; to the novelist Janice Eidus, for her excellent suggestions; and to my agent, Anna Ghosh at Scovil, Chichak Galen.