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Stories
by Dahlia de la Cerda
A debut collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny stories about Mexican women who fight, skirt, cheat, cry, kill, and lie their way to survival.
"Life's a bitch. That's why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she's foaming at the mouth." In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life and become her. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to endure, telling their own stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once a work of black humor and social critique, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers.
"[De la Cerda's] tactics succeed in creating the enchanting feeling that one is sitting across from each narrator, being told their stories as a close confidante... . The author's demand that we bear witness to the senseless murders, in all their gruesomeness, of these bright young women is sobering and commendable." —Kirkus Reviews
"De la Cerda offers a refreshingly unapologetic voice for women who refuse to be placated. This is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"Reservoir Bitches offers a foundation on which working-class, provincial, and otherwise marginalized writers in Mexico and elsewhere can add the detail necessary to transform tales into nuanced stories that reflect the richness of the world of their protagonists." —Los Angeles Review of Books
"Dahlia de la Cerda is the armed wing of morras who write, the long-awaited apostle of morras who help morras. Barrio counterwriting, misoprostol mixed with weed, narcocorrido tweets, a fuckload of violence, Dahlia's books are all or nothing—luxury literature that is proletarian, radical, and carnal for our era of idiots and cowards." —Gabriela Wiener, author of Undiscovered
"This book has the force of an ocean gully: it sucks you in, drags you through the mud, and then cleanses you." —Andrea Abreu, author of Dogs of Summer
This information about Reservoir Bitches was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dahlia de la Cerda is a writer and activist based in Aguascalientes, Mexico. She is the author of Perras de Reserva, which won the 2019 Premio Nacional de Cuento Joven Comala, and Desde los Zulos. She is also the cofounder of the feminist organization Morras Help Morras. Reservoir Bitches is her English-language debut.
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