STAFF PICK!
These stories delineate the undercurrents of Latinx life, family relations, and immigration with such clarity. At the same time, some of the darkest matters merge with surreal and fantastical elements within these narratives. I found myself constantly surprised, delighted, and deeply haunted all at once. -- Jaeyon
One of the year's most anticipated books by The Millions, Colorlines and Remezcla
Carribean Fragoza's debut collection of stories reside in the domestic surreal, featuring an unusual gathering of Latinx and Chicanx voices from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, and universes beyond.
"Eat the Mouth that Feeds You renders the feminine grotesque at its finest."--Myriam Gurba, author of Mean
"Eat the Mouth that Feeds You will establish Fragoza as an essential and important new voice in American fiction."--H ctor Tobar, author of The Barbarian Nurseries
"The writing is sharp and unexpected, and full of vivid turns."--David Ulin, Alta Magazine
In visceral, embodied prose, Fragoza's imperfect characters are drawn with a sympathetic tenderness as they struggle against circumstances and conditions designed to defeat them. A young woman returns home from college, only to pick up exactly where she left off: a smart girl in a rundown town with no future. A mother reflects on the pain and pleasures of being inexorably consumed by her small daughter, whose penchant for ingesting grandma's letters has extended to taking bites of her actual flesh. A brother and sister watch anxiously as their distraught mother takes an ax to their old furniture, and then to the backyard fence, until finally she attacks the family's beloved lime tree.
Victories are excavated from the rubble of personal hardship, and women's wisdom is brutally forged from the violence of history that continues to unfold on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
"Fragoza's surreal and gothic stories, focused on Latinx, Chicanx, and immigrant women's voices, are sure to surprise and move readers."--Zoe Ruiz, The Millions
"This collection of visceral, often bone-chilling stories centers the liminal world of Latinos in Southern California while fraying reality at its edges. Full of horror and wonder."--Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review
"Fragoza's debut collection delivers expertly crafted tales of Latinx people trying to make sense of violent, dark realities. Magical realism and gothic horror make for effective stylistic entryways, as Fragoza seamlessly blurs the lines between the corporeal and the abstract."--Publishers Weekly
"Fierce and feminist, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You is a soul-quaking literary force."--Dontan McPherson-Joseph, The Foreword, *Starred Review
"The magic realism of Eat the Mouth that Feeds You is thoroughly worked into the fabric of the stories themselves . . . a wonderful debut."--Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World
"Fragoza's prose, a switchblade of a magical glow, cauterizes as it cuts. In a setting of barren citrus trees, poison-filled balloons, and stuccos haunted by the menace of the past, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You reinvents the sunny noir."--Salvador Plascencia, author of The People of Paper
"I felt this collection deep in my bones. Like the Chicanx women whose voices she centers, Carribean Fragoza's writing doesn't flinch. It is sharp and dream-like, tender-hearted and brutal, carved from the violence and resilience of generations past and present."--Natalia Sylvester, author of Everyone Knows You Go Home
