the light of your body

Lingering whispers of the departed echo throughout this volume of short fiction. At a Día de los Muertos celebration attended by those left behind—and loved ones who have moved on—Pati, dead for twenty-nine years, remembers when her daughter came out and is amazed that Emma Elisa still builds an altar for her. Miguelito remembers his Mamá, his father who transitioned to a woman and lost custody of her son to her traditional, tyrannical father.

ire’ne lara silva’s stories are rooted in mythical realism, in liminal spaces that don’t differentiate the voices of the dead from those of the living, that navigate borders and borderless places fearlessly to bring us the stories of gods, mortals and animals. An extraterrestrial relates an eyewitness account of Malinche and the Conquest. Santísima Muerte opens a taco truck in Austin and finds love. A woman blinded by hummingbirds and distracted by multiple lovers struggles to find her purpose.

The pieces in this tender yet fierce collection consider grief, death and love, all through the prism of indigenous beliefs. Highlighting the importance of art, spirituality and relationships in healing wounds from generations of trauma, ire’ne lara silva explores how stories inhabit the body—the mythologized, sexualized, historicized, embattled body—and how different kinds of desire fuel imagination towards transformation and wholeness. The characters in these stories are driven by their gods, echoes of the dead and their desire to love—and to create.