By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
I loved Del Rio native Marcela Fuentes’ brilliant debut novel, “Malas,” a canción de amor to the culture, customs, language and life of the unique Texas-Mexico border region where she was born and raised.
(See separate story.)
Fuentes currently calls Ft. Worth, Texas, home, but she is a
graduate of Del Rio High School and glimpses of the Queen City can be found throughout her book like a palimpsest on which she has created the fictional border town of La Cienega, where the novel takes place.
The “malas” – Spanish for “bad girls” or “bad women” – of the novel are its chief characters: Pilar Aguirre, her comadre Romi Muñoz and Romi’s granddaughter, headstrong and lovable Lucha “Lulu” Muñoz.
We meet Pilar first. She is an illegitimate daughter born in Mexico, who makes her way to the United States where she marries her love, Jose Alfredo, a vaquero of the old school. Pilar settles into life in La Cienega, raising her son with Jose Alfredo and socializing with her neighbors.
But an unexpected and unwelcome visitor curses the young wife and mother, and Pilar’s life takes a serious of tragic turns.
The story then jumps forward some 40-odd years, and we meet Lulu and immediately learn about her running conflicts with her alcoholic, devil-may-care “he’s so Mexican he’s Mexicano” dad, Romi Muñoz’s son.
One reason Lulu’s relationship with her father is strained is because he and his mother are set on planning Lulu’s quinceañera, but Lulu, who could care less about a coming-out party, is focused on being a singer in a Mexican punk rock band.
The stories of Pilar, Romi and Lulu are complex and interwoven, by turns tragic and laugh-out-loud hilarious and will keep readers compulsively turning the pages.
Fuentes is a gifted writer and a brilliant storyteller. Her writing fixes readers in a time and a space, like this description of the border summer:
“Why would anyone want to have a celebration in the full zenith of la canicula, the scorched-earth misery of the hottest weeks of the year? Every day so wretched that the neighborhood dogs crept beneath the houses to pant out their misery. The sky so eye-wateringly brilliant it wasn’t even blue, but a fierce yellow white.”
It’s Del Rio, in the third week in August.
Fuentes’ love of her binational, bicultural and bilingual roots are also evident throughout the book, which she has liberally sprinkled with Spanish words and phrases. Her love of an eclectic variety of music also surges through the book.
Fuentes’ fine writing draws irresistible characters the reader can’t help but love and cheer.
“Malas” is about Mexican and American girls and women and families, but it is at the same time about any girl or woman or family, a universal story of hope, tragedy, misunderstanding, forgiveness and growing up that happens to be set on the Texas-Mexico border.
Fuentes’ writing to me is reminiscent of that of another great writer and storyteller, Louise Erdrich, who set her tales of Native families in the northern border states of the Dakotas and Minnesota.
Each of the women in “Malas” is bound by the ties of friendship, blood, heartbreak and triumph, and by the dramatic and unexpected story that sweeps the book along.
“Malas” is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. I bought mine at the Barnes & Noble in Plano. “Malas” has been listed as one of Amazon’s Best Books of June 2024 and by The Washington Post’s “10 Noteworthy Books for June.”
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
