#BlogTour ‘Mestiza Blood’ by V.Castro

About the book…

From the lauded author of The Queen of the Cicadas (which picked up starred reviews from PW, Kirkus and Booklist who called her “a dynamic and innovative voice”) comes a short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desire and visions focused on the Chicana experience.

V.Castro weaves urban legend, folklore, life experience and heartache in this personal journey beginning in south Texas: a bar where a devil dances the night away; a street fight in a neighborhood that may not have been a fight after all; a vengeful chola at the beginning of the apocalypse; mind swapping in the not so far future; satan who falls and finds herself in a brothel in Amsterdam; the keys to Mictlan given to a woman after she dies during a pandemic.

The collection finishes with two longer tales: The Final Porn Star is a twist on the final girl trope and slasher, with a creature from Mexican folklore; and Truck Stop is an erotic horror romance with two hearts: a video store and a truck stop.

Huge thanks to the ever awesome Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me in for the newest V.Castro offering from Flame Tree Press, ‘Mestiza Blood’

This is a hugely influential, stunning and vibrant collection of tales which more than lives up to the title-mestiza blood is impregnated on every page.

It is unashamedly Latinx and a lot of the horror is not just based in the way that women, in particular are left exposed by society to shame, degradation, and otherness, it is what is accelerated when you add in being American but recognised as such which creates this vortex of unlimited rage and anger.

The social and cultural issues discussed within these tales cover the despicable immigration crisis, the ‘othering’ and therefore vulnerable women and children courtesy of ICE, abandonment of cultural significance in the form of traditions such as payments to gods and monsters and so much more.

This is an echoing of feminine rage which exhorts and distorts the very structures which makes them vulnerable, and wreaks well placed vengeance on the oppressors and potential abusers of those on the outskirts of ‘respectable’ society. It is not a book for the faint of heart , it is someone who takes her cultural influences, sharpens them to a point and gets to work.

From ghosts seeking revenge, to a porn star making her last movie. A child abandoned to a Catholic Monastery finding her soul mate on leaving as an adult due to their very strange connection. Dystipian landscapes inhabited by the walking dead of a very different kind. Bodily transformations, alterations, demonic possessions unlike anyhting you will have come across and a trade in human (or rather, non-human trafficking) are served up, raw and wriggling for your delectation.

There are dark themes here, but ones which you are powerless to avoid staring into. This is real, authentic experiences bleeding out onto the page in the way only V Castro can bleed. She cuts you open then takes a salt cellar to the readers wounds before you can lick up the mess it makes. The honesty with which she writes about Santeria, La Lechuza , and curandera is a revelation and really makes you aware of just how little we are aware of the traditions and deities and monsters of Latino traditions. Living in a country which people in general do not recognise as your country, making you feel like outsiders in a place which you call home and has rich and complex community traditions, is a fertile ground for engendering monsters, feelings of betrayal, loss and lust.

The things which are coveted-mestiza curves, exotic appearance and the trope of sexual availability of non-white women-are the very things which, in this collection, mostly men abuse and take advantage of, (there is a particularly delicious example of a pharmaceutical CEO named Karen getting her just desserts in one of the tales) that has you cheering the monsters, cheering for destruction red in tooth and claw.

”People were ridiculed for wanting to change, for loving who they wanted to love, for seeing what was inside and making it a reality on the outside. There was no tolerance for the other.”

I am not best placed to comment on the cultural aspects of the tales as I do not have the experiences or understanding which I freely own up to. The way in which V Castro’s writing has encouraged me to look into Latino culture and seek out Latinx writers is reflective of her as a starting point, a flashpoint in realising the lack of cultural awareness in which I am in need of correcting, and it is my responsibility to do this lifting and learning, not others.

She brings you this blood stained bag of tales, and let’s you make of it what you will, but to me the central lesson is this (and please feel free to pull me up on my mistakes or any clumsy phrasing throughout what I have written)-change is not comfortable, growth should not be easy, learning should be painful and it behoves us all to pay witness to the way every day horror goes unchecked in the name of ‘progress’ .

”They trying to put the fear of the president in us.”

That is the real monster.

About the author…

V. Castro is a Mexican American author from San Antonio, Texas, now residing in the UK. She is a full-time mother, a Latinx literary advocate, and co-founder of Fright Girl Summer, a platform to amplify marginalized voices.