Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico

These electrifying essays and poems from Mexican writers consider pressing social justice issues in the country. In “Blood, Name, Surname,” Yásnaya Elena A. Gil points out that while being labelled “Indigenous” enables colonized peoples to recognize their shared oppression, it’s a term with no analogue in her native Mixe language whose usage risks reproducing the colonial perspective. Marina Azahua’s “Rebellion of the Cassandras” compares women who protested the Mexico City police department’s history of sexual violence in 2019 to the mythical Greek prophetess Cassandra, contending that both told important truths that were denied by broader society. Several pieces emphasize the need for a more inclusive feminism, as when Dahlia de la Cerda criticizes the class privilege underlying Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Poems by Jimena González and Brenda Navarro meditate on women’s pleasure and the “cynical performance of allyship,” respectively. Other pieces embrace more adventurous formats. For instance, Valeria Luiselli’s “sonic essay” likening colonial conquest to sexual violence takes the form of a stage tragedy told by a Greek chorus. The pointed essays are animated by a righteous anger, and the smattering of poems and experimental entries keep the proceedings fresh. The result is an invaluable cross-sectional analysis of the state of contemporary Mexican feminism. (Feb.)