Melchor knows brutality and how human fear can amplify those brutalities. Not a fictitious story but the testimony of a fellow human’s fearful experience with brutality. There is little introspection in this relato, this testament of experience. I’m a big fan of Melchor’s two novels, Hurricane Season and Paradise, for their depth and acute detail of human hatred, anger, and pain. Her style is wonderfully dense, lyrical, and unrelenting.
First published in Spanish in Aquí no es Miami, Almadía, 2013, and in English in This Is Not Miami, New Directions/Fitzcarraldo 2023
A Personal Anthology 