Cockfight
María Fernanda Ampuero
Deftly written with spare, exacting prose, Cockfight is a masterful collection of short stories by María Fernanda Ampuero, translated by Frances Riddle. The riveting collection presents searing portraits of family life. The compendium of stories highlighting themes of violence and sexual abuse provide a window into gender, class, and race analyses and reveal the weight of patriarchy and machismo in Latin America. The setting for many of the stories is on the surface banal; of the 13 stories, nearly half center on family life. The façade of normalcy is immediately fractured, starting with “Auction,” an eerily haunting story about cockfighting. The malodorous scents wafting through an unknown warehouse location take a young woman back in time to her childhood when her father forced her to clean up gutted roosters after cockfights. Her living nightmare has just begun as she is abducted during a routine taxi ride and human trafficked to the highest bidder. Subtle acts of defiance help the woman as her ultimate fate is revealed by the story’s end. The point of view of many of the stories is told through a child’s perspective. Some of the stories reflect violence against women, such as “Griselda,” where a child is aghast not at the brutality inflicted against her neighbor, Griselda, but at the loss of the neighborhood baker who created the most sumptuous, elaborate children’s cakes for all of the neighborhood kids. In this way, the story sheds light on femicide; however Ampuero also suggests a society desensitized to violence against women. |
The final story in the book titled “Other” provides a glimmer of hope for women’s futures where a woman shops weekly for her dominating husband’s precious foodstuff. In the final scenes of the story, the woman has become fed up with him and opts to crossover to a life on the “other” side outside the control of her abusive husband. Thus, the book ends on a hopeful note. This stunning, feminist book shines a light on the power expressed in a patriarchy where emotional, physical, and sexual abuse rear its head like a Hydra.
María Fernanda Ampuero is an Ecuadorian author of two works of nonfiction: Lo que aprendi en la peluqueria (What I Learned in the Hair Salon) (2011) and Permiso de residencia (Residency Permit) (2013). She received the Joaquin Gallegos Lara National Fiction Prize in 2018 for Pelea de gallos (Cockfight).
Cockfight is a publication by Feminist Press and can be purchased online at The Bronx is Reading.
María Fernanda Ampuero is an Ecuadorian author of two works of nonfiction: Lo que aprendi en la peluqueria (What I Learned in the Hair Salon) (2011) and Permiso de residencia (Residency Permit) (2013). She received the Joaquin Gallegos Lara National Fiction Prize in 2018 for Pelea de gallos (Cockfight).
Cockfight is a publication by Feminist Press and can be purchased online at The Bronx is Reading.
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