Tierra fresca de su tumba

Náufragos, origami, posesión y ciencia: estos cuentos encarnan el punto de encuentro entre los horrores contemporáneos y los terrores antiguos. Seis relatos de una belleza oscura que laten con temáticas perturbadoras: la legitimidad de la venganza, el incesto como medio de supervivencia, brujería indígena versus tradición japonesa, el cuerpo como la víctima fatal que habitamos. Los cuentos de Rivero perforan al lector como una herida, ofreciendo también posibilidades de amor, justicia y esperanza. Narrados con un lirismo frágil y feroz, los cuentos de Tierra fresca de su tumba punzan los abismos del alma humana, y a la vez reforman los límites del gótico para incorporar ritos precolombinos, leyendas, ciencia ficción y erotismo. Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science—this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet. In Fresh Dirt from the Grave , a hillside is “an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty.” It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero’s short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a women’s prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.

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