Women Crossing Borders

In celebrated Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s 1998 novel The Savage Detectives, a brilliant but depressive group of young poets roams through Mexico City, writing and drinking at bars across the frenetic capital. Nearly all those poets, modeled on real writers, were men. Today, the Mexican literary stars frequenting the same bars are just as likely to be women. Writers like Gabriela Jauregui, the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Controlled Decay who is now at work on her first novel, are part of a surge of young, urban Mexican women whose talent, vision, and drive are challenging the country’s traditionally macho literary culture.

No longer just the domain of male greats like Bolaño, Octavio Paz, and Juan Rulfo, Mexican literature has given rise to a new class of female scribes who are racking up successes at home and abroad with books that tackle such issues as immigration, discrimination, and cultural identity in lyrical, engaging prose. At a time when Arizona is waging war on its Mexican immigrants, these writers are providing new perspectives on being Mexican and crossing borders, both physical and cultural. More than simply migrants or invisible laborers, their Mexican narrators are sharp and multilayered. “There are some times when I feel compelled to say, ‘This is also Mexican,’ ” says Jauregui, who has written poems about riding the subway in Mexico City and blue-collar workers in East L.A. who dress up in ornate cowboy outfits at night and practice roping in neighborhood parks.

Valeria Luiselli’s essay collection, False Papers, which was excerpted by The New York Times, deals with people’s relations to spaces—including her own sense of being “in between” Mexico and the United States, neither native nor foreign in either. Luiselli also writes about dealing with racism and ignorance when she became reduced to the category of “Latina” after moving to New York to study. She ruminates on the isolation of the city: “The more nights you spend in other rooms—hotels, rented apartments, borrowed beds, sofas, shared spaces—the more you will get to know yourself.” In Chloe Aridjis’s widely praised novel Book of Clouds, the female Mexican protagonist, like most immigrants, struggles with xenophobia and cultural alienation while trying to preserve her humanity in Berlin. And Brenda Lozano’s All Nothing is an intimate, humorous portrait of a girl dealing with loss and grief.

Getting published in Mexico is no easy feat, especially for unknown writers: big publishers tend to focus on profit-reaping established authors. A few independent presses, like the successful Sexto Piso, have published Mexican writers in Latin America and Spain. “Many young authors first get published by small publishing houses, but their presence is very small, so the books go practically unnoticed,” says Eduardo Rebasa, a founder of Sexto Piso. “However, in recent years there has been a surge in independent publishing, with houses trying to publish quality stuff, but also trying to be successful financially and create a project that is sustainable in the long term.”

Readers can count on seeing more such works, thanks to an increase in the number of both female writing students and writing collectives for women. And their stories will continue to reflect a rapidly changing Mexico, even if most of the writers call other places home.