image source, Sofía Álvarez Capuñay
Rosa Chávez Yacila (Lima, 1988) grew up in a house in the Northern Cone of Lima watching her mother work exhausting days cleaning other people's houses and her father multiply to manage a restaurant.
Two bodies that fluttered around her, almost always tired, while she looked at them with curiosity, paying attention above all to the words they dropped.
"I'm nervous," "I, as always, nervous," "you already know that we Yacilas are very nervous," I heard Graciela, her mother, say.
Nervous? What is it to be nervous?
In her autobiographical novel "The Nervous Ones," Chávez Yacila explores her life and that of other women in her family with clinical curiosity in search of the unconscious of that word, the one chosen in her lexicon to refer to mental illnesses.
That nervousness, which doctors would call depression or anxiety, is the closest thing to an inheritance that runs in your family.
Through a sober and delicate narrative, "The Nervous Ones" looks at the unspoken connections between social class and mental health, and how the relationship between a mother and daughter is woven around (and sometimes thanks to) shared suffering.
Chávez Yacila spoke with BBC Mundo as part of the presentation of his book at the HAY Festival Arequipa 2026. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
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There is a phrase from your mother that triggers the entire novel: "You know that we Yacilas are very nervous." Why did you stop there and what did you find?
Well, this is an autobiographical or non-fiction book that tells the story of a mother and daughter who have long been called "nervous."
The mother always talks about the Yacilas being nervous, and at a certain point in her life, the daughter begins to wonder what it means to be nervous, what that nervousness can mean.
And she is investigating this, which actually has to do with depressive and anxious symptoms, both in her case and in that of her mother.
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a community psychologist, and she said: 'It doesn't even matter that much what you call what you're feeling as long as you somehow take charge.'
But of course, in the search to take charge, you realize that the health system is broken. You meet doctors of all calibers: some good, but also many bad doctors.
It can be like an entrapment. You have to persist, but in that persistence your time is gone, your money is gone, and not many people have that possibility.
In recent years, we have seen an explosion of conversation about mental health: podcasts, hotlines, public policies, Instagram reels... What reaction does it generate in you?
It is true that there is more willingness to talk about certain topics that were not talked about before. When I just started going to psychologists or psychiatrists, we are talking about 20 years ago, there was already more talk than in my parents' time, for example.
Now with social networks it is also even much more common. And you come across people who are very responsible with information.
But it is a double-edged sword, because there is also misinformation and people diagnosing themselves with symptoms or neurodivergences, or taking certain topics lightly.
For example, I am sometimes bothered by the way in which taking antidepressants or anxiolytics is trivialized. It's not something terrible by any means, but it's not like taking a flu pill either.
I don't know if I would have liked to live my adolescence at this time. Maybe it would have been stuffed with so much information.
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In your story you put the issue of mental health next to that of poverty, one next to the other...
I have been very surprised by the reception of the book by the number of readers who tell me that they had never read something that reflected the history of their families in this way.
And the truth is that I didn't write the book as if to say "well, I'm going to write about this because it's necessary." It wasn't something I had calculated. They are the observations that I have had throughout my life, the images that have come to me again and again, and that is why I expressed them the way I express my thoughts, which is by writing.
But certainly, if you look at Peruvian literature or literature in general, you don't see much of this conflict between mental health and money.
And, for my friends, since we are from a more or less similar social class, money at home has always been an issue. Always. It is something that involves illness, migration and a lot of crucial things in a family.
So it did strike me that it hasn't been explored as much in literature.
As I say, I didn't calculate it. But I think that's ultimately what it's about, writing something original, looking where someone else didn't see something before, or looking at it in a different way, or saying it in a different way.
At one point, your mother is around your house cleaning, listening to a station called Radio Felicidad, whose motto is "I feel good." It seemed to me that this scene betrays a collective misfortune... How many women were there like her, looking for a little joy or peace in those words that came out of the radio? Why do you think mental illnesses continue to be navigated so lonely?
I believe that there are more and more collective spaces. I have seen, for example, that the neurodivergent community has its support groups.
But, after all, having an emotional illness or not feeling well is still a taboo topic. It's still embarrassing or embarrassing. Or it's not considered something you should pay attention to.
I myself, although it may seem paradoxical, don't just talk about my mental health like that.
I have talked and continue to talk about mental health, but I don't delve much into the subject either, because I still feel that people are not as prepared to hear certain things without judging or worrying.
Depression and anxiety brought you to a very hopeless place. How do you get out of there? Is it possible?
I want to be very careful when saying this, because each case is very particular.
I cannot say that yes, that it is possible in all cases and that, if you try hard, you will achieve it. I don't think it works like that.
However, I still have optimism for life, and the only thing I think I have done in all this time—because I was stubborn, I suppose, and also because I have been surrounded by very good people—is try one more time. Just that.
But it does depend on the people around you, your disposition, your time, money too.
image copyrightApollo Studio/Random House
When you return from Spain to Lima with your partner, you ask them to stay living in the Northern Cone of Lima. Tell me about that place and what it means to be "conero."
Probably one of the things I like most about everything that is happening with the book is that the concept of the cone is being talked about in other countries. I never imagined it was possible.
When Lima began to expand in the 1950s, Andean migrants began to leave the city center and go to the margins.
Those parts where migrants from the Andes settled had a shape like ice cream cones on the map.
They are not the most beautiful, touristy, or safe parts of Lima, but it is where most people live.
They are neighborhoods that continue to face many deprivations and marginalization as well.
"Conero" is still an insult. It means that you are someone who is rude, tawdry, of bad taste, even criminal.
Beyond living in the cone, being a conero or conera is associated with a certain aesthetic, a certain way of speaking, a certain education.
It is interesting that this concept of a cone is based on a diagnostic look from above, not the look of a person who is present there. You did grow up there. What images from your childhood in the cone would you tell someone who doesn't know it?
Something that I remember, that I like and that here where I live now I don't have much of it is the idea of neighborhood: having neighbors, small businesses on the streets...
But I also remember, for example, the problem of gangs. There was a time when every Saturday around midnight two gangs fought on the corner of my house.
They carried some kind of sabers and they clashed them with the floor to threaten each other.
The next day, Sunday, you went out to buy bread and saw everything full of stones that had been thrown at each other.
Also, when it was carnivals in February, water balloons were thrown at people passing by on the street so that they would get wet. You had to be careful when you went out because suddenly a group of kids would come throw balloons at you and you would get soaked.
Those kinds of things—well, and the seven crazy people on my block too—formed me, gave me part of the sensitivity that I have.
And there is another layer that you mention in the book of that life of the cone, which is the cholo. How valid is that category?
It is still a current category. I would say that less and less as an insult or as something pejorative, because in the last 20 years there has been a vindication of the term.
And also, because chola or chola here in Peru can also be a word that implies miscegenation. In that sense, we are all cholos.
But in its most primitive sense, cholo means that you are a person of indigenous ancestry, of Andean ancestry, above all. And it's still an insult.
In Peru we are seeing a shift towards ultra-conservatism, and there are people once again emboldened to insult you in the street or to say things that perhaps until a few years ago you thought but didn't say because you were going to be cancelled.
I wouldn't claim victory.
It is a word that I have heard all my life, because in my house it was a term that was used a lot of affection.
My mother called my father cholo, cholito, they called me cholita. I always heard it that way in my house.
Outside it's already different.
Without a doubt, the most important theme of the book is your relationship with your mother. You delve into the guilt you feel for everything she has had to work on and the responsibility you feel to save her. Is it something you still feel today? Or how did you understand that it didn't belong to you?
Well, I'm well treated. It has been a process of years.
As mentioned in the book, and I see it a lot in friends who share the same origin, one usually feels that responsibility towards their parents, especially when you have seen that they have made such an effort to support you or to move you forward.
It is very difficult, if you are a person with a certain degree of empathy, not to feel that. And I think it is a class issue.
When you come from these poor families, who have struggled so much, you feel that kind of responsibility to save your parents.
But at one point it is good to understand that what your parents did, without detracting from their efforts in any way, was being parents.
Parents have to raise you, they have to support you. It is a moral obligation, but also a legal obligation.
It helped me to take that into account to organize my thoughts on the matter. I admire and am very grateful to my parents for everything they did because it was difficult, but I no longer feel guilty. Believe.
image copyrightMusuk Nolte
There is a part of your history that you call "the days of the fear of flames", appropriating an analogy from David Foster Wallace. It is the time when you deal with suicidal ideation. But you don't try to put a lot of drama into that experience, you don't make it the only center of gravity of the story...
I think it has to do with the tone I wanted to give to the book.
We have talked about public health, the cholo, the Northern Cone... If I saw myself from the outside, I would say 'this person wanted to write a pamphlet, meet all the checks to win the oppression olympics'. But again, it's not something I planned.
I was aware that issues of gender, social class, and mental health were coming into play, but I precisely didn't want it to be a pamphletary thing.
I didn't want it to feel like I was raising a political slogan, even if you later draw your own conclusions.
I was very careful about that, and I was also very careful not to exaggerate, not to over-describe.
It is not necessary for you to say that something is painful for it to be understood that it is painful.
For example, when I read David Foster Wallace's talk about the terror of flames, I said 'I can't say this better'.
I truly took this book as a literary work.
There was already a lot of separation from the chronological and emotional theme, so I was sort of split and very aware of what I was doing narratively.
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