Among the stories and characters of Vow of Darkness it unfolds a reflection around the prohibitions and dangers that a nun living the confused and violent period of independence from Spain must face when she decides to be a writer in a world where writing is an exclusively male activity. Alongside these adventures is woven a reflection about personal and collective memory. It outlines how the indigenous population extinguishes destroyed by war, smallpox and shame. And yet, there are characters trying to give sense to their own lives through generosity, compassion, understanding the other, identifying with their memory, diluting cultural distances, changing the roles and transforming the victorious on defeated or trying to solve the antagonisms that the nun draws in the written geographies of her body throughout philanthropy. Originally published in Spanish as Voto de tinieblas, this is a translation by Kieran Tapsell.