Prayers for the Stolen

When Ladydi meets the blonde British prisoner Georgia, she says that after “her blue eyes and my black eyes met” (174), she “knew she was thinking, so, this is the dark and ugly creature who has my beautiful princess’s name!” (174) Ladydi is named after the late Princess Diana by her mother, as a strange way of showing solidarity with women who have been mistreated. However, her name and this incident also come to symbolize many of the contradictions affecting Ladydi’s character throughout Prayers for the Stolen. On the one hand, Ladydi is fiercely loyal to Chulavista, Guerrero, and Mexico. She identifies strongly with the resilience and ferocity of the people, especially the women, in these places. She also comes to associate these qualities with the fauna of the jungle world, its iguanas, its parrots, and even its red ants. On the other hand, she is highly influenced by Western culture that she consumes via television. This is particularly evidenced in her veneration of Diana and Western ideals of beauty and femininity.

Ladydi’s attitude toward men throughout the novel exhibits a similar tension. Her life is overshadowed by her father’s abandoning her and her mother at a young age. Her community is torn apart by the machista world of drug trafficking, and one of her best friends is abducted because of it.