Enriquez wants to tell us about poverty, gentrification and a crippling economy, but first and foremost - she wants to scare the shit out of us, and does it marvelously. The "propulsive and mesmerizing" (The New York Times) story collection by the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Our Share of Nightnow with a new short story.The short stories of Mariana Enriquez are: "The most exciting discovery I've made in fiction for some time."Kazuo Ishiguro However, not until the expansion of global capitalism did Argentine literature reveal the new horrors placed before us by necropolitics. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. June 17, 2022 . Indeed, one of the most fertile readings that has yet been undertaken of her fiction starts from the gothic, a genre that has garnered a great deal of visibility and critical appreciation in recent decades (i.e. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. It was something biblical. Meet Mariana Enriquez, Argentine journalist and author, whose short stories are of decapitated street kids (heads skinned to the bone), ritual sacrifice and ghoulish children sporting sharpened teeth. Additionally, the river marks the geographical limit between the city of Buenos Aires and what we call Gran Buenos Aires, or the suburbs. Eventually, Enriquezs girls and women walk voluntarily towards what they least want to see. The children born with those defects are, alas, treated more as symbols than characters, or as indications that the river leaches humanity. The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory. With Enriquez, literature invokes social ghosts that recall recent Argentine historyimmigrants, homeless children, slum-dwellers, and others who lead excluded, precarious lives that dont matteraestheticized in tales of true political horror like Under the Black Water, El desentierro de la angelita [The little angels disinterment], Rambla Triste [Sad Rambla], Chicos que vuelven [Kids who come back], Cuando hablbamos con los muertos [When we talked to the dead], and the particularly biting The Dirty Kid, which tells of the effects of both drug trafficking and witchcraft (a pregnant addict sacrifices her children to San La Muerte) in harsh urban neighborhoods, like the Constitucin barrio of Buenos Aires. Subscribe toTheKenyon Reviewand every issue will be delivered to your door and your device! There both the fierceness of the military and the untamed jungle combine into a ghostly trap, where the turn into the paranormal leaves the wife with some unexpected options. Is this enormous symbolic production around evil a response to economic crises and the implementation of ever-more-savage neoliberal policies? But hes not getting out, and neither is she. Table of Contents: Things we lost in the fire - Schlow Library . For a long time, it was considered elitist (protagonized by upper-class characters and set in opulent castles), escapist (appealing to a beyond that shuns the present), normative (vindicating a logocentrism that condemns the unknowable and the strange), and barbaric (it is no coincidence that the word gothic comes from the people called Goths, and cannibalism and violence are two of its recurring themes). The rejection of maternity, approached via the supernatural (i.e. The narrative too takes a sudden jolt, as the finely hewn realism reveals filaments of deeper and more mysterious origin. But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. Shes relievedobviously, everyone has just gone to practice the murga for carnival, or already started to celebrate a little early. The boy opens the door; she goes in. What youre doing is basically reporting I dont think [journalism] can make you think in the long term or a very profound way, something you can go back to in 20 years and say, 'this is what was going on, this is the space people were living in.'. Instead theres a wooden pool topped with a freshly slaughtered cows head. He hasnt brought a lawyerafter all, he says, hes innocent. Enriquezs seams are fine ones. I write for myself, thinking about my country and its reality. I felt unpleasant echoes of That Only a Mother, a much-reprinted golden age SF story in which the shocking twist at the end is that the otherwise precocious baby hasnt got any limbs (and, unintentionally, that the society in question hasnt got a clue about prosthetics). She learns that strange things, including a dead man coming up out of the water, are happening in the slums. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. "The Gothic Feminism of Mariana Enriquez" by Ana Gallego Cu . By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. (Its the most remarkable word weve ever seen.) So we share interests then? Its refreshing to encounter somebody so political and literary who, instead of turning from genre, adopts it to save her work falling into preaching or pamphleteering. Mariana Enriquez recalls a world of dive bars, cheap wine, rockers, writers, misfits and el uno a uno: Buenos Aires before thecollapse, The author of "White Cats, Black Dogs" on why we're drawn to folk tales and how superstitions shape stories, Bora Chung uses the fantastic to examine the absurdity of misogyny and societys injustices in her short story collection, Let your spooky flag fly with a cocktail and Jen Fawkess delightfully strange stories in Mannequin and Wife. But I saw these 30,000 girls screaming all the time. Now we burn ourselves. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. Before she can react, he shoots himself. She shows us. In the specific case of the River Plate tradition, there are important precursors such as Quiroga, Cortzar (who even wrote the famous Notas sobre lo gtico en el Ro de la Plata [Notes on the gothic in the Ro de la Plata]), Onetti, Felisberto Hernndez, Silvina Ocampo, and Alejandra Pizarnik. Never. The river is sort of a symbol of carelessness and corruption. Before she can react, he shoots himself. The contamination is due to the factories and slaughterhouses on the shores of the Riachuelo that dump their waste into the river, polluting it. In his house, says the boy, the dead man waits dreaming. The priest is furious, and furious with Pinat for being stupid enough to come. Mariana Enriquez (Buenos Aires, 1973) has published novelsincluding Our Share of Night, which won the famous Premio Herraldeand the short story collections Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in the Fire, which sold to 20 international publishers before it was even published in Spanish and won the Premio And for those boys? You Are Here: ross dress for less throw blankets apprentissage des lettres de l'alphabet under the black water mariana enriquez. The slum spreads along the black river, to the limits of vision. Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howards sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn. The driver makes her walk the last 300 meters; the dead boys lawyer wont come at all. Enriquez: No, theres not. Enriquez spent her childhood in Argentina during the years of the infamous Dirty War, which ended when she was ten. Hallelujah? Penguin Random House. $24.00. Translation is its own art, of course, and je ne parle pas Espanol, so the story Ive actually read may be as much the work of Megan McDowel as Enriquez. After all, a living boy is one less crime to accuse the cops of. They learned how to swim. The time stamp suggests that he at least knew that two young men were thrown into the Ricachuelo River. While chatting with the Argentine author, Im nave enough to bring this point up. Her young adult Mythos novel,Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequelFathomless. Either way, its good to read a story with different settings from our usual selection, different points of view, different horrors. When I wrote "Our Lady," I was obsessed with teen-age girls and with my own teen-age years. Kenyon College Much of Black Waters horror is the surreal constraints of poverty, pollution, and corrupt authority. Next week, Lovecraft and Henry S. Whitehead explain why you should be more careful about mirrors in The Trap.. Pinats dressed down from her usual DA suits, and carries only enough money to get home and a cell phone to hand muggers if needed. In this case rather than Lovecrafts racism and terror of mental illness, we get ableism and a fun-sized dose of fat-phobia. [Scheduled] South American: Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enriquez, "Under the Black Water" Welcome to the discussion of "Under the Black Water," the 10th story from Mariana Enrquez's Things We Lost in the Fireshort story collection. Normally there are people. Never mind that Pinat has his voice on tape, saying Problem solved. Or, even better: what makes readers become addicted to her poetics? Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories ( Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. Enriquez: In Argentina everything is political. Instead theres a wooden pool topped with a freshly slaughtered cows head. In this case rather than Lovecrafts racism and terror of mental illness, we get ableism and a fun-sized dose of fat-phobia. Thus the act of looking takes on enormous importance. [1], "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. Im a cultural journalist. Other contemporary authors to look for are Leila Guerriero, Samanta Schweblin, Juan Jos Saer, Hernn Ronsino, Liliana Bodoc, Rodrigo Fresn, and Hebe Uhart. Since Esteban Echeverras foundational 1871 work The Slaughter Yard, Argentine literature has offered plentiful examplesArlt, Lamborghini, Chejfec, etc.of the representation of forms of violence. Its just that even the weirdest fiction needs a way to elide the seams between real-world horror and supernatural horrorand many authors have similar observations about the former. Privacy Policy. Its interesting to me that there can be a certain disdain for whats popular, but I reject that, thats an elitist way of thinking. [2] " Spiderweb" appeared in The New Yorker. Not one of the blind kids with misshapen hands gets characterization, or even a speaking role other than to mouth platitudes about dead things dreaming. Hes only been back a little while. Children living on the street, a girl dying on the sidewalk after an illegal abortion, prisoners tortured at a detention center, sit in wait for those who would notice them, making broad daylight just as unnerving as midnight. Fairy tales are the ancestors of scary tales. I would say that my socio-political commentary comes more from my experience as a citizen than it does from my career as a journalist. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. Then she runs, trying to ignore the agitation of the water that should be able to breathe, or move. No matter how weighty her themes, Enriquez readily references genre fiction and popular culture in her work; films such as Kiyoshi Kurosawas dread-soaked internet ghost story Pulse and the new flesh of Cronenbergs Videodrome. Ive been wanting to read more weird fiction in translation, so was excited to pick up Mariana Enriquezs Things We Lost in the Fire. In the slum Buenos Aires frays into abandoned storefronts, and an oil-filled river decomposes into dangerous and deliberate putrescence.. All represent nomadic subjects (Braidotti), rendered precarious and placed in crisis, who find in the practice of violence a path to emancipation and protest against the true enemy: capitalism and the middle-class neoliberal family that reproduces it. Im still intrigued by the idea of pollution as a messed-up attempt at bindingcontaining, of course, the seeds of its own destruction. The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. Her narrators have to shrug past almost unbearable sights as part of their everyday routines. Except these teenagers are thoroughly unlikeable, and they take teenage callousness and self-centeredness to unusual levels. [1] "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. Horror is the drop of blood that flowers in the clear water of her social commentary. Similarly, in the title story, a hideously burned beggar kisses the cheeks of commuters, taking pleasure in their discomfort with her. Much of Black Waters horror is the surreal constraints of poverty, pollution, and corrupt authority. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. Pinats dubious about all this, or wants to be. Virgilio Piera said that Kafka was a costumbrista writer in Havana; we might suggest, with Enriquez in mind, that the gothic is a costumbrista genre in Argentina. Also hes very, very drunk. [2] "Spiderweb" appeared in The New Yorker. 2023 Macmillan | All stories, art, and posts are the copyright of their respective authors, Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water. Later on, the ideas of Evil and the dead river become an homage to Lovecraft and his unpublished works, mixed with my interpretations of Laird Barron. But now he knows: they were trying to cover something up, keep it from getting out. The chairs have been cleared out, along with the crucifix and the images of Jesus and Our Lady. What is the price of a body? She leaves the church crying and shaking. In Spiderweb, a woman stuck in an abusive marriage takes a trip across the border into Paraguay. The truth is that I dont think too much about readers from any part of the world. From where?, The most disturbing element to this is its source material, like much of Enriquez, drawn from news headlines. You have to get out of here, Pinat tells him. Cookie Notice The story ends with a lingering look towards her exemplary act of violence, which must soon follow. Our Privacy Notice has been updated to explain how we use cookies, which you accept by continuing to use this website. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. There are hints of sacrifice, mysterious deaths of the young. The short stories of Argentine author and journalist Mariana Enriquez are seeing machineslenses that throw the uglier side of the human condition into uncomfortably sharp focus. In the Villa, shes startled by silence. Seven Stories About Scary (and Possibly Sentient) Plants, Five Space Books to Send a Chill Down Your Spine, Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence, A Critical Division of Starfleet Intelligence: Section 31 and the Normalization of the Security State. Turning to Latin American literature, we observe that the gothic has borne relatively little fruit, often considered a subgenre within the fantastic, science fiction, or magical realism (see Brescia, Negroni, Braham, Dez Cobo, Casanova-Vizcano, and Ordiz). Up next is u/Joinedformyhubs with the penultimate story in the collection, Green Red Orange, on Wednesday, December 21. Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water. The setting in the troubled wake of the Argentine dictatorship makes their underlying influence seem obvious, but sometimes the origins of horror can surprise you. Meanwhile, in his house, the dead man waits dreaming. So what is prisoned under the river? 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