Eat the Mouth That Feeds You
Carribean Fragoza
|
Coeditor of Boom California, UC Press’s cultural journal, Carribean Fragoza’s Eat The Mouth That Feeds You is a masterful debut collection centering themes of power, the body, and ancestral roots in the lives of the mostly Latina/Chicana protagonists. Stylistically, the visceral stories detail such themes as motherhood, pregnancy, and domestic abuse. Fragoza deftly writes of women at crossroads in these stories: young women making choices about their future (“The Vicious Ladies,” “Mysterious Bodies”); devoted maternal figures (“Eat the Mouth That Feeds You,” “Crystal Palace”) and the historical legacy of colonialism recounted in the riveting “New Fire Song.” In the eponymous “Eat the Mouth That Feeds You,” maternalism is conveyed in fantastical, life-affirming ways as a mother is mysteriously devoured by her daughter who literally sucks the lifeblood, marrow, and other bodily organs from her. Inasmuch as the mother doesn’t know how much more she can withstand, by the end of this phenomenal story the mother’s qualms are cast aside. At the heart of the story is the ancestral lineage between mothers, daughters, and granddaughters, as maternalism conveys nurturance, sustenance, and ancestry: “the best I can do is let her eat whatever she needs and wants. I am relieved that I know where to find my mother and grandmother. They are inside my daughter.” (41) |
In “Mysterious Bodies,” a young Latinx woman is faced with an unintended pregnancy. After consulting a curandera who offered various remedios caseros, including oils, rubdowns, and incantations, her boyfriend Eduardo slips her white pills produced by his friend Alex. Like other stories in this collection, “Mysterious Bodies” is a tale of a young woman’s plight and the grotesque consequences of those strange pills.
“New Fire Song” is a story about Latinx/Indigenous field workers who lament the farmers who routinely alter crops grown. There are hints of colonialism as the narrator notes that the farmers have long abandoned ancient Indigenous traditions: “fire rituals are so pagan, and they’ve left all that far behind . . . they were Christians now.”(100) The allusion to fire rituals seems to convey ancient Aztecs who, in fact, honored new life annually with a New Fire Ceremony, one of the most significant markers in Aztec society. An unexpected ending makes powerful connections between contemporary agricultural laborers and their Aztec forebears.
The ten fantastical stories in this book illuminate the lives of Latinx/Chicanx women. Simply put, this electrifying book may cement Fragoza’s legacy in the canon of Chicanx/Latinx literature as the visceral stories dance off the pages.
Carribean Fragoza is the coeditor of Boom California, UC Press’s open-access cultural journal. Her fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in BOMB, Huizache, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the founder of the interdisciplinary arts collective, South El Monte Arts Posse.
Eat the Mouth That Feeds You is a publication by City Lights and can be purchased online.
“New Fire Song” is a story about Latinx/Indigenous field workers who lament the farmers who routinely alter crops grown. There are hints of colonialism as the narrator notes that the farmers have long abandoned ancient Indigenous traditions: “fire rituals are so pagan, and they’ve left all that far behind . . . they were Christians now.”(100) The allusion to fire rituals seems to convey ancient Aztecs who, in fact, honored new life annually with a New Fire Ceremony, one of the most significant markers in Aztec society. An unexpected ending makes powerful connections between contemporary agricultural laborers and their Aztec forebears.
The ten fantastical stories in this book illuminate the lives of Latinx/Chicanx women. Simply put, this electrifying book may cement Fragoza’s legacy in the canon of Chicanx/Latinx literature as the visceral stories dance off the pages.
Carribean Fragoza is the coeditor of Boom California, UC Press’s open-access cultural journal. Her fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in BOMB, Huizache, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the founder of the interdisciplinary arts collective, South El Monte Arts Posse.
Eat the Mouth That Feeds You is a publication by City Lights and can be purchased online.
Comment Box is loading comments...
|
|
