Prieta Is Dreaming

This extraordinary posthumous collection from Chicana poet and theorist Anzaldúa (Borderlands) offers a window into a woman’s marginalized yet magical life on the Texas plains. At a young age, Prieta discovers her queer sexuality and her close connection with animals. “Out of the Corner of the Eye / De reojo” portrays her terrifying and mysterious encounters with a “huge yellowish animal,” which her grandmother suggests is her nagual, or spirit guide. In “Mita’ y mita,” Prieta worries that when her mother says she’s “mita’ y mita,” or half and half, it means she’s “one of those were-people, half-human, half-jaguar,” until her mother explains she sees Prieta as half man, half woman. Other entries explore how Prieta finds liberation in her cultural and sexual identities as a young woman, such as in “La Werejaguar in the Woods of the Dream,” where she tells her cousin Teté, “You and I, queer freaks like us, know the cracks between the worlds and are able to see both sides of the crack.” Anzaldúa plays wonderfully on the theme of hybridity throughout, blending realism and fantasy, fiction and memoir, and human and animal. This radiates with joy. Agent: Stuart Bernstein, Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists. (Nov.)