under the black water mariana enriquez

He hasnt brought a lawyerafter all, he says, hes innocent. 780 Van Vleet Oval In "Under the Black Water" from Things We Lost in the Fire, I read: "It was a procession. A few years ago in Buenos Aires, two policemen detained two poor, young men who were coming back from a night club. Enriquez: Time! Now we burn ourselves. But theyre not evil, I think? No, I concede, impotent rather than evil. The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. In this case rather than Lovecrafts racism and terror of mental illness, we get ableism and a fun-sized dose of fat-phobia. Borges and his friendsthe writers Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampowere so fond of horror that they co-edited several editions of an anthology of macabre stories. In the distance, she hears drums. Hes tried! Spiderweb | The New Yorker This unpretentiousness translates well to our surprisingly laid-back conversation, considering the subject matter black magic, torture and death being discussed at this early hour. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. 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). I swear we dont keep picking stories with shootings and killer cops deliberately. The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. Enriquez: Of the authors I know who have works translated in English, there are Di Benedetto, Silvina Ocampo, Manuel Puig, Ricardo Piglia, and Julio Cortzar, who is very famous. Before she can react, he shoots himself. Marina Pinat, Buenos Aires DA, isnt thrilled with the smug cop sitting in her office. T hough the terms are often used interchangeably, or as a compoundGothic Horrorin their primeval essences Gothic fiction and Horror fiction can be said to have as much to do with each other as classic and modern Country music.Modern Country, like Modern Horror, is a literal, unpretentious genre: we're from the American South, we sing how we talk, and primarily about the subjectsbeer . On the southern edge of the city, past the Moreno Bridge, the city frays into abandoned buildings and rusted signs. People swimming under the black water, they woke the thing up. He laughs. 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. Fear is one of the most powerful and motivating emotions. The poor men. Mariana Enriquez words drip with glorious sarcasm, and I imagine her slowly shaking her head down the line from Buenos Aires. Nonetheless, in the twentieth and twenty-first century it has called the attention of critics, since many members of the latest generation of Argentine fiction writers (Oliverio Coelho, Selva Almada, Hernn Ronsino, Pedro Mairal, Luciano Lamberti, and Samanta Schweblin) have revitalized literary horror as a critique of Argentine politics: of the military dictatorship, of the States abuses, of the ecological apocalypse, of femicides, of the uncontrolled power of cartels and drug traffickers, etc. Silvia hated public. Influenced by the works of Stevenson, Poe, James, Lovecraft, Bradbury, Silvina Ocampo, and Stephen King, she takes up the North American gothic and deterritorializes it toward an Argentine setting and toward Argentinas history, drawing on a feminist perspective that revises and broadens its meaning. Mariana Enriquez mesmerizing short story collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, is filled with vibrant depictions of her native Argentina, mostly Buenos Aires, as well as some ventures to surrounding countries. Enriquezs writing is therefore often in the first person, both singular and plural, and extraordinary elements enter into this fiction through the sense of smell (El carrito [The cart]), hearing (Dnde ests corazn [Where are you, darling]), taste (Carne [Meat]), sight (Ni cumpleaos ni bautismos), and touch (Los peligros de fumar en la cama [The dangers of smoking in bed]). I like dark themes, and I would say that its my way of looking atthings. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. The Writing Life in Argentina in the 1990s, Kelly Link Makes Fairy Tales Even Weirder Than You Remember, When Reality is More Terrifying Than Cursed Bunnies, Booktails from the Potions Library, with Mixologist Lindsay Merbaum. Our Privacy Notice has been updated to explain how we use cookies, which you accept by continuing to use this website. It is a story that shares echoes with Schweblin's Fever Dream, in that belief in the occult becomes confused with the damaging physiological effects of certain poisons. 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. The priest refers to them as retards, but the narrative itself isnt doing much better. Table of Contents: Things we lost in the fire - Schlow Library . Copyright 2023 Kenyon Review. But now the streets are dead as the river. And of course, whatever lies beneath the river might have been less malevolent, if it hadnt spent all that time bathing its ectoplasm in toxic sludge. In Spiderweb, a woman stuck in an abusive marriage takes a trip across the border into Paraguay. The coddled suburbanite does not exist. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories by Mariana Enriquez You have to get out of here, Pinat tells him. All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in May! They learned how to swim. The time stamp suggests that he at least knew that two young men were thrown into the Ricachuelo River. Argentina had taken the river winding around its capital, the woman observes, which could have made for a beautiful day trip, and polluted it almost arbitrarily, practically for the fun of it. If the foul water itself werent bad enough, she learns that police have murdered kids by throwing them off a bridge into it. Never mind that Pinat has his voice on tape, saying Problem solved. Electric Literature is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2009. His life and works were never the same afterthat. He hasnt brought a lawyerafter all, he says, hes innocent. What got into you? Subscribe toTheKenyon Reviewand every issue will be delivered to your door and your device! 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. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it. Or, even better: what makes readers become addicted to her poetics? Powered by WordPress and hosted by Pressable. Enriquezs seams are fine ones. I dont have much contact with reality in my journalism. They inhabit the same plane, stalk the same prey; both are offered equality in terror. Instead theres a wooden pool topped with a freshly slaughtered cows head. I had opened by complimenting this cocktail of politics and cult horror in her work. Similarly, in the title story, a hideously burned beggar kisses the cheeks of commuters, taking pleasure in their discomfort with her. We are delighted to offer a range of residential and online programs to support writers at every stage of their writing journey. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. 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. We dont know who has taken away a vanished girl, or murdered a child, or consumed a husband. You shouldnt have come, says Father Francisco. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in May! I want my stories to have an air of familiarity, especially those in a collection or in a book. These women have a choice in what they notice and what they flinch away from. The narrative too takes a sudden jolt, as the finely hewn realism reveals filaments of deeper and more mysterious origin. Vitcavage: Can you pick one of the stories and explain how you came up with the idea and then how you crafted it into a shortstory? Summary Bibliography: Mariana Enriquez - Internet Speculative Fiction But it would not be until the start of the twenty-first century that this new reading would attain global success thanks to TV series, comics, and bestsellers like Millennium, Twilight, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and many more, which have filled our imaginations with monsters, zombies, vampires, mutants, ghosts, cyborgs, and other supernatural beings that coexist with us in a sort of global-gothic world. Emanuel means god is with us. But what god? The cows head, clearly, is just some of the neighborhood drug dealers trying to intimidate the priest. A DEAD BABY and her haunted great-niece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez's collection of disquieting short stories. "[4] Jennifer Szalai, writing in The New York Times, wrote "[Enriquez] is after a truth more profound, and more disturbing, than whatever the strict dictates of realism will allow. Vitcavage: When youre writing, do you primarily write for an Argentinian audience, or do you consider that your works will end up in English at some point, read by Americans as well as the rest of theworld? But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. Defiled churches, shambling inhuman processions hey. Is fear political? He tried to swim through the black grease that covers the river, holds it calm and dead. He drowned when he could no longer move his arms. All Rights Reserved. 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. June 17, 2022 . (Its the most remarkable word weve ever seen.) The blend of horror, fantasy, crime, and cruelty has a particular Argentine pedigree. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories by Mariana Enrquez [But] it wasnt about the boys, it was about them, feeding off each other, their energy, and trying to release something. "The Gothic Feminism of Mariana Enriquez" by Ana Gallego Cuias - LALT He wouldnt touch politics, or football. Today were reading Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water, first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. Normally there are people. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. [2] " Spiderweb" appeared in The New Yorker. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. And for those boys? I dont go beyondthat. Yamil Corvalns body has already washed up, a kilometer from the bridge. Its one thing to mistreat and scare a young man, but its a very different thing to throw him into that hellishriver. About Things We Lost in the Fire. This process thereby generates a violence, both symbolic and material, that produces disease, precarity, and death. She dreamed that when the boy emerged from the water and shook off the muck, the fingers fell off his hands.. Hallelujah? However, not until the expansion of global capitalism did Argentine literature reveal the new horrors placed before us by necropolitics. Do all lives have the same worth? The rejection of maternity, approached via the supernatural (i.e. Silvia was the one who came up with the idea of the quarry pools that summer, and we had to hand it to her, it was a really good idea. In one story, "Under the Black Water," a severely polluted river that has become a dumping ground for victims of police violence becomes a source of a zombie cult. Im a cultural journalist. But hes not getting out, and neither is she. A fact that made him feel very un-Argentinian. A woman, in this case from Argentina, who writes strange, unsettling horror stories, starting from a political and aesthetic commitment that has had such an international repercussion that it brings to mind the Latin American Boom, in feminist and terrifying form. I mean, one of the places where I had the most fear in my life was a Backstreet Boys concert, Enriquez says, with no hint of mockery. In the middle of the night, invisible men pound on the shutters of a country hotel. Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. Beyond this empty area live the citys poor by the thousands. Normally there are people. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), 2023 Macmillan | All stories, art, and posts are the copyright of their respective authors, Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water, What We Do for Wraithlike Bodies: Hilary Mantels, Easy Weeknight Recipes to Appease Ghosts: Deborah Davitts Feeding the Dead and Carly Racklins Unearthen, My Shoggoths Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun: Mythos Poetry by Ann K. Schwader. The slum spreads along the black river, to the limits of vision. And of course, whatever lies beneath the river might have been less malevolent, if it hadnt spent all that time bathing its ectoplasm in toxic sludge. Shes relievedobviously, everyone has just gone to practice the murga for carnival, or already started to celebrate a little early. Her neo-Lovecraftian stories The Litany of Earth and Those Who Watch are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land and The Deepest Rift. Ruthanna can frequently be found online onTwitterandDreamwidth, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic householdmostly mammalianoutside Washington DC. On the river banks, there are also many slums. Shes disturbed by his toothless mouth and sucker-like fingers. 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.'. As it is, the cows head, and the yellowtainted cross and flowers, dont promise a happy relationship, regardless of who worships what. Shes trying to get a glimpse when the thing moves, and its gray arm falls over the side. The driver makes her walk the last 300 meters; the dead boys lawyer wont come at all. On Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez By Angela Woodward New York, NY: Hogarth Press, 2016. Then she runs, trying to ignore the agitation of the water that should be able to breathe, or move. Before she can react, he shoots himself. This seems very different from the American horror trope, which often involves the comeuppance of someone blithely heedless of what lies beneaththe burial ground under the housing development, or the bland cheerleader unsuspecting of the slashers claws. I write for myself, thinking about my country and its reality. Normally theres music, motorcycles, sizzling grills, people talking. Body horror based on real bodies is horrible, but not necessarily in the way the author wants. 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. 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. I didnt do it, the cop says. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. Table of Contents: Things we lost in the fire - Schlow Library Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina Birthdate: December 1973 . 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. Thus, resistance is body politics, and its goal is empowerment through control of the body, which becomes a dissident political subject (an allegory of movements like NiUnaMenos or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) in order to articulate womens sovereignty: a new ideology, a new way to fix the value of the body, of life, and of death. [3] Contents 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 All these tales are told from a womans point of view, often a young one, and they seem to be able to hold out against the horror that lures them for only so long. by Mariana Enriquez. Horror is the drop of blood that flowers in the clear water of her social commentary. The psychic interiority of broaching ones own darkness is the mainstay of horror fiction, the genre to which these stories clearly belong. Ruthanna Emrysis the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, includingWinter TideandDeep Roots. 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. The Dark Themes of Mariana Enriquez - Electric Literature There were terms that you didnt understand, like political prisoner, or detention camps., In one story, The Intoxicated Years, a trio of adolescent girls go feral during the vacuum, post dictatorship, when hyperinflation was accelerating and the countrys infrastructure failing. After a few pages of that, walking corpses and abomination-imprisoning oil slicks just seem like a logical extension. A line of people playing the same loud snare drums as in the murga, led by deformed children with their skinny arms and mollusk fingers, followed by women, most of them fat . Oh come, Emanuel? This river has been polluted for many years, just as I reference in my story. In short, Mariana Enriquez reads Argentine society with a feminist lens that evinces the structural violence imposed by necropolitics, class inequality, and gender. This collection comes with a trigger warning for body horror, abuse, neglect, violence against children, teens, and women, self-harm, drug use, discussion of rape and sexual assault, animal cruelty, disordered eating, and police brutality. Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth. Shes relievedobviously, everyone has just gone to practice the murga for carnival, or already started to celebrate a little early. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. We dont know what the awful spectre is, gray and dripping, that sits on the bed with its bloody teeth. Some of Enriquezs women resurface from such experiences. Spoilers ahead. The protagonists in Enriquezs stories are mostly aware of their privilege, if its a privilege to have a place to live, food to eat, a face thats not grotesquely disfigured. The police brutality, I think yeah, if you have to choose something as an echo of that [the dictatorship]. With undergraduate and doctorate degrees in Hispanic Philology and an undergraduate degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Granada, she has been a contractor with the Ramn y Cajal Program and a visiting researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, Princeton, Paris-Sorbonne University, the University of Buenos Aires, and Yale. But behind her, footsteps squelch: one of the deformed children. But a representation of a husband that doesnt make his wife happy something that happens all the time youre so uncomfortable with.' When I wrote "Our Lady," I was obsessed with teen-age girls and with my own teen-age years. Hallelujah? 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. Loading. While most shudder away, Enriquezs women are drawn to it, as if to see what they can do with it. Why is that a representation youre comfortable with? [2] She dreamed that when the boy emerged from the water and shook off the muck, the fingers fell off his hands.. Current schedules can be found on the sidebar, in the top tabs, and pinned on the front page of the sub. Then she runs, trying to ignore the agitation of the water that should be able to breathe, or move. Dont you hear them? For years, he says, he thought the rotted river a sign of ineptitude. Currently, theyre trying to clean it up, but it will take decades. But, of course, her inspirations occasionally arise from those more innocuous sources: The girls, that kind of stayed with me. On the other hand, Enriquezs fiction also enters into dialogue with the deeply rooted tradition relating illness and literature (Foucault, Sontag, Guerrero, Giorgi), with stories of necrophilia, cannibalism, satanic rites, anorexia, social phobias, etc. Its stench, he said, was caused by its lack of oxygen. 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. 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). It was a crime that was pretty big. Today we're reading Mariana Enriquez's "Under the Black Water," first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. Its interesting to me that there can be a certain disdain for whats popular, but I reject that, thats an elitist way of thinking. Enriquez: I dont know. Is this enormous symbolic production around evil a response to economic crises and the implementation of ever-more-savage neoliberal policies? I dont write pedagogically. Ruthanna Emrysis the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, includingWinter TideandDeep Roots. After a few pages of that, walking corpses and abomination-imprisoning oil slicks just seem like a logical extension. 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. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories (Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. Dangers Of Smoking In Bed review: Mariana Enriquez's stories haunt 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. She is the author of nine books, including two short story collections, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in. Then, when I was a bit older, 8 or 9, this was the time when the crimes of the dictatorship came [to public knowledge]. I sincerely believe that they dont have a true idea of what it is like to live in a highly politicized society. That is to say: the disturbing is within subjects, within ideology (not outside the house, not under the bed: inside) and within bodies divided and marked by social class, ethnicity, and gender. Most dont. Just a few months ago, she helped win a case against a tannery that dumped toxic waste in the river for decades, causing a massive cluster of childhood cancers and birth defects: extra arms, cat-like noses, blind high-set eyes.
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