Something Followed Us Home:
Tales of Latiné Horror
Edited by Cynthia Pelayo
This blog has repeatedly featured works of Latiné Gothic, since it’s a genre that I’ve been returning to of late. There are several prominent exponents of this brand of horror, most of them women, with a preference, it seems, for the short-story form.
Newcomers to the genre may do much worse than immersing themselves in this multi-author collection of short stories, which, quite appropriately, is being issued simultaneously in Spanish (Lo que nos siguió a casa: Cuentos de terror Latiné) and in English (Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror). The editor who has brought the collection together is Cynthia Pelayo – a Bram Stoker Award-winning and International Latino Book Award-winning writer and poet based in Chicago, who often draws inspiration from her Puerto Rican heritage. Besides contributing a poignant and effective Shyamalanesque ghost story (“El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico”), Pelayo has assembled an impressive roll-call of authors, including such well-known names as Mariana Enríquez, Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas and Mónica Ojeda.
So what exactly distinguishes Latiné horror, apart, obviously, from the origins of its authors? The foreword, by Brenda Lozano, attempts to answer the question by identifying some common traits – a haunting and haunted political history, remnants of colonialism still evident in linguistic duality, and the tension between Catholicism and pre-Christian cults. There are some fine examples in this generous collection, which range from body horror to weird speculative fiction; from tales of demonic possession to fairytale-like stories; from an offbeat vampire story to reworkings of folkloric monsters.
Although
the impact of individual stories varies (some of the offerings suffer from
heavy-handed metaphors or overly obvious “messages”), the overall quality of
the collection is high, making for a multi-faceted and contrasting anthology.
This is an excellent Latiné horror primer.
The full list of stories is the following:
Blue
Flowers by Agustina Bazterrica
The Hand
that Feeds by Isabel Cañas
Her
First Cruise Ship by Ann Dávila Cardinal
My Boyfriend
by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
The
Immaculate Rebirth of Nicki Duran by Zoraida Córdova
Guardian
Angel by Mariana Enriquez
The
Return of La Muelona by Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro
Pomelo
by Xochitl Gonzalez
LUZ Y FER by Leopoldo Goût
Specter by Ananda Lima
Mechanical Servants LLC by Juan Martinez
The
World from Above and the World from Down Below by Mónica Ojeda
The
Rooftop Revolution of Selly Aviles by Daniel Jóse Older
El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico by Cynthia Pelayo
Whispers
from the Root by Lilliam Rivera
Fidelity
by Alex Segura
We are
Gathered Here Together by Diana Rodriguez Wallach
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