#mexican bookblr

[kuramirocket]

Centro Cultural Elena Garro

Mexico City, Mexico

Source

[papenathys]

What I'm trying to say is, I hate performative and pretentious depth so much. And it's always white authors, especially in the Gothic/dark academia genres. Whatever had to be said has already been said around the late 90s-early 2000s by actually inventive writers, and now white authors are just milking the contemporary fandom fascination with ships like Loustat and Hannigram (that are actually well written and complex in their respective works), stripping them of their essence completely, diluting them to empty hollows like "toxic queerness" and "the intimacy of violence" and "cannibalism as a metaphor for all-consuming desire" with a splash of Catholic imagery and witchcraft and tarot and smut and poetry that is losely marketed as something like "a bloody sumptuous feast of hedonism and queer desire".

It's not even disaffected in a halfhearted way like Donna Tartt, no, every axis of (supposed) oppression milked by these books is 100% serious and self-absorbed. You got the completely unironic Anne Rice and Sylvia Plath and Oscar Wilde worshippers and the tired, FLACCID endless poems about pomegranates and dog metaphors and knives and stigmata like stop stop stop REINVENT RETHINK BE ORIGINAL it's so overdone it's dead it sounds like regurgitated tumblr metaphors it's accumulating flies just stop!!!!!

No wonder we get those tweets fifteen times a day about how "x line sounds like it would be from the Bible but it's actually from tumblr"– followed by a line/quotation that actually sounds exactly like it's from tumblr. STOP overdoing the metaphor to the point of insincerity!!! stop turning once-novel things into edgy marketable words about bloody girlhood and erotic desire and religious passion!!!

And to take a break from negativity, here are a few books I really, really enjoyed that handled a mix of grimdark, gothic, horror and/or queer themes with originality and substance:

**The Wicked and the Willing by Lianyu Tan: a historical sapphic romance set in 1920s Singapore that examines the "Carmilla" vampire motif from a postcolonial lens.

**House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson: a very short, very eerie sapphic gothic romance (?) story, examining race, class and gender discourses through the allegories of vampirism and a centuries-old hunger.

Mexican Gothic by Silva Moreno Garcia: a historical gothic horror story about a 1950s Mexican heiress who discovers the hideous history underlying the family estate of an aristocrat English family; this is a genuinely disturbing but also great work of postcolonial horror (heavy eugenics storyline be warned).

**Providence Girls by Morgan Dante: a Lovecraftian retelling of two women in 1950s New England who discover love while battling the horrors both monstrous, cosmic as well as societal. genuinely beautiful, disturbing and a wonderful exploration of grief in horror.

**Walking Practice by Dolki Min: a shapeshifting alien stranded on earth lures victims via dating apps and seduces people of both genders before killing and consuming them. translated from Korean and a disturbing, funny (but also tragic) and dark satire about trans bodies, queerness in 21st century South Korea, violence and alienation. PLEASE read this.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica: in an alternate history where ethical cannibalism has been legalized globally, and humans are bred as livestock, a narrator grapples with ethics when he rescues a live female "specimen" from his meat factory. super disturbing, satire of the author's experience under the Argentinian dictatorship.

**Chlorine by Jade Song: a Chinese-American girl in 1990s USA grapples with sapphic crushes, adolescence, trauma, racism and her immigrant identity while taking part in competitive swimming and dreaming of mermaids. absolute fever dream masterpiece of a debut novel combining teenage queer sexuality and body horror, with a narrative that challenges norms of beauty and gender a lá Julia Ducournau films.

(?) Bunny by Mona Awad: psychedelic, colorful, pop neon horror satire about an all-female MFA creative writing cohort at an elite arts college, and the lengths they go through to achieve their literary success, as observed by the outsider loner girl. this was such a direct, targeted and brutal parody of dark academia/ femcel unhinged women books lmfao??? but also witty and disturbing without sounding condescending.

**= explicit LGBTQ rep. there is a question mark before Bunny because it has– neither explicit rep nor queerbait– but a secret third thing, schrödinger's representation.

Also first person to write "let people have fun" should donate 30 dollars to my kofi promptly

[queeraliensposts]

I've seen people calling Aiden Thomas a transmed author (mostly cause some transmeds like to claim his books), but if you followed Aiden Thomas on social media you'll see this not the case, also I think the reason why a lot of white transmeds resonate with his novels like Cemetery Boys and The Sunbearer Trials, has nothing to do with Aiden Thomas's writing and more to do with the fact that Aiden Thomas writes stories about LATINO trans men, and for a lot of white transmascs the message went way over their head.

In my own personal experience as a latino trans guy I relate much more to Aiden Thomas's work then to most other transmasc authors, because Aiden knows that it's a lot easier for us to internalize those toxic ideas of gender. Toxic masculinity is prevalent in latine culture it has it's own damm name "machismo". Therefore it's a lot harder for us to come to the realization that there's nothing wrong with our bodies and the problem stems from the way society views them. To add to that just as toxic masculinity is so over enforced in latine culture so is toxic feminity, so many of us feel the need to present very femininely before we finally decide to start presenting as ourselves. So once we actually come out and start presenting as male we try to compensate for that. On top of that growing up latine and afab means you and your body gets sexualized a lot more often. Mostly by the white supremacist stereotype of the curvy spicy Latina.

With all of that I can easily explain why when I read The Witch King, a novel about a white trans guy, when Wyatt said that he doesn't have a problem with his body and it was the way that people saw him as female, I personally couldn't relate.

But now going on the the actual content of Aiden Thomas's work (I will only be touching on Cemetery Boys because I haven't finished the Sunbearer Trials 😅).

Yadriel starts the novel with a lot of internalized transphobia which he's not even aware of. This is because at this point, he is the only queer person he knows, and he's surrounded by people who see him as different for who he is. It's not until he meets Julian, another queer person who has interacted with many other queer people. It's not until Yadriel starts talking to Julian and his friends that he starts realizing that everything he was taught about what it means to be a man is bullshit by the end of the book while I'm sure Yadriel hasn't 100% gotten over his internalized transphobia, he set on a path to unlearn it.

Aiden Thomas isn't a transmed author he just writes about the trans experience from a perspective that is often overlooked.

Closing off I would like to set the record cause as a latino trans author that's currently working on a novel about a latino trans boy mc. For any transmeds who wanna claim my work, it's not for you.

[100-great-books]

[book-coffee-stormy]

Mexican Gothic ✨✨

[princessmacabre]

red in december

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || January || 26 || Bookish Goodies

[mad0katsuki]

Since “Como agua para chocolate” is trending here in Mexico (idk if in other parts who talk in Spanish or even other languages) I love that more people is reading the book.

Like the reason I firstly read it was in High School, it was for extra points in History class and I loved it.

I remember only two people of my class (another girl and me) cared about it and did it, at the end neither of the two of us needed the points but we got into the “Pedro haters club” with our teacher lol

But now that is also a series in Max is having more recognition than before, even if there exists a movie since the 90’s. Happy happy.

[esme-elora]

Happy birthday to me! My lovely wife got me a huge book haul for my birthday. I'm already done with one and am onto the second! 🥳

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's Read Around The World TBR - Part 2

Books set in Hispanic Latin American countries <3

[kuramirocket]

"My father, root of my blood, do not let weakness and fear stop the warrior spirit of our eagles from flying. Our men cannot abandon their desire to defend these lands so our children may live in the eternal garden of happiness that our gods promised. May the hand that will stop the enemy not be weak and never desire to press in friendship those hands that have been washed with the blood of our brothers."

- Erendira (who became a symbol of indigenous resistance when she led the Purépecha uprising against the Spanish invaders).

From Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky Myths of Mexico by David Bowles

[a-typical]

Outside, rain was falling on the banana leaves and water in the puddles sounded as if it were boiling.

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo, 1955

[words-and-coffee]

But love is impossible and it goes on despite the impossible.

Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things: In a Mexican Restaurant I Recall How Much You Upset Me

[the-helena-files]

🦇 April wrap-up

I wasn't going to do this post but I figured out it might be helpful to keep track on how many books I've read in a month, so here we are.

I've read 8 books in April. I mean, technically 7 and a half because I just finished the last one, but I've read the majority of it in April so it's still game.

Frankenstein

Yes i did read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the year of our lord 2024, you are allowed to laugh. I'm going to do another post to go over my thoughts, meanwhile what I have to say is: 5 stars, I should have picked up earlier.

Juniper & Thorn

This... book... It became one of my favorite books of all time and the more I think about it the more I like it. 4.5 stars, it looses half a star to me because of 1 (one) scene that left me ill for days.

Mexican Gothic

I really like the atmosphere of this one, the romance could have been left out though, solid 4 stars.

The wolf and the woodsman

After reading Juniper & Thorn, I went through the other works by Ava Reid, this one I liked less, but even then, very nice worldbuilding, I loved the mythology, 4 stars.

Divine Rivals

I did picked up this because some influencers I trust recommended non stop, and I... I mean, it's not bad, it's just not my cup of tea. I really liked the mythology again, the gods were very intriguing, 3 stars.

A study in Drowning

Ok hear me out. This one is Ava Reid's ya debut and it's SO GOOD, I infodumped about this book to at least four friends and my therapist on the last few weeks. 4.5 stars, loses half a star cause I didn't vibed with the love interest very much, but I understand him being like that was important to the story.

Daisy Jones and the Six

I picked this one up because it's my best friend's favorite book, so I wanted to read to make her happy. I didn't liked it, but I don't have the heart to tell her. 3 stars, a whole ass stars is for Naely.

Your blood, my bones

This is a book for the yearners. This is a book for longing and hoping and grieving what it was and what could have been. But I was too distracted trying to figure out the magic system and the creatures. 4 stars, RIP Pedyr he would have loved my chemical romance.

[studywithfin]

I'm starting to add more pictures! Drawing and writing are a great combo for memorizing.

Side note:

My teacher gave me a slide show presentation today, which is 29 slides long. It's due on the 14th of February... I only have 11 days. Tomorrow, I'll be down to ten. Wish me luck 🙏

[princessmacabre]

mexican gothic & lady tan’s circle of women