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• Malas ( novel) Viking (New York, NY), 2024

1. Malas LCCN 2023029868 Type of material Book Personal name Fuentes, Marcela (Fiction writer), author. Main title Malas / Marcela Fuentes. Published/Produced [New York] : Viking, [2024] Description 373 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9780593655788 (hardcover) (ebook) CALL NUMBER PS3606.U38 M35 2024 FT MEADE Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Marcela Fuentes website - https://www.marcelafuentes.com/

  Marcela Fuentes is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer and essayist. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was the 2016-2017 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She was born and raised in Del Rio, Texas.

  Her acclaimed debut novel Malas, received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, the Washington Post, and The New York Times, was featured in People, Elle Magazine, and Texas Monthly, and was selected Good Morning America Book Club’s pick for June.

  Order MALAS here.

  Coming soon, the story collection MY HEART HAS MORE ROOMS THAN A WHOREHOUSE, from Viking Books.

  Her literary representation is Michelle Brower at Trellis Literary Management; she is represented by Katrina Escudero at Sugar23 for TV/Film.

• BookPage - https://www.bookpage.com/interviews/marcela-fuentes-interview-malas/

  June 2024
  Marcela Fuentes: Fates and furies
  Interview by Stephenie Harrison
  Rebellious women face a family curse in Marcela Fuentes’ debut novel Malas, infused with folklore and Tejano culture.
  Share this Article:

  In Malas, the legend of La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) ties together the stories of two women from different generations in a Texas border town. When the two meet in the ‘90s, their connection—including a shared love of Selena—threatens to surface buried town secrets.

  Malas is your first novel. Can you tell us a bit about your writing process for the book? When did you start writing it and where did your inspiration come from?

  Malas began as my attempt to write a fairy tale for a fairy tales course during my M.F.A. The first thing that came to me was a young and very pregnant Pilar being confronted by an elderly woman claiming to be her husband Jose Alfredo’s ‘real’ wife. I was in Iowa at the time, buried in snow, which made me vividly recall the other extreme—the merciless heat of a south Texas summer, and the dreamlike quality of those still, hot afternoons, perfect for the apparition of this old woman in the street. But though I set out to write a villain, I ended up digging into a lot of vulnerability. I wrote about 40 pages, the opening to the novel, and didn’t turn in my fairy tale after all because the story would not end. Probably six months later, another big chunk came to me, in the form of Gen-X teen Lulu running around at night, full of hurt and rage at her father. Looking back, I think my inspiration came from the style of storytelling I’d heard all my life, a family or local history that might pass for folklore.

  This book brims with colorful descriptions and vivid imagery. Your description of the dusty border town of La Cienega was particularly captivating, lending Malas a very precise sense of place and cultural richness. Did you draw at all upon your hometown of Del Rio, Texas, when developing the setting for this book?

  Certainly there’s a lot of Del Rio in my novel, but I also drew on other small border towns I’m familiar with, and Laredo, which is my mother’s hometown. I considered setting the novel in an actual place, but ultimately there was more freedom in a fictitious one. I wanted to respect the individual histories of those actual towns, while retaining an authentic sense of the complexity of these communities.

  Read our starred review of Malas.

  One surprising thing about Malas is that although it begins rooted in the supernatural, it evolves into a story that is more grounded in reality. Can you discuss how you approached that balance and made the choice to shift it over the course of the novel?

  I would say that there are different realities for different people. Pilar has a perspective that might be more susceptible to a belief in the supernatural, and to a certain extent Lulu’s father does too. One of the things I wanted to explore was this idea of reality being very much in the eye of the beholder, and also, the idea that overcoming generational trauma might sometimes be related to not accepting a fate-driven narrative. Another preoccupation in Malas was the idea of stories, romanticized or folkloric, taking the place of factual events, because people are prone to mythologizing, even family histories.

  An intergenerational saga, Malas moves between different decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s. What was it about this time period that interested you?

  I am very interested in the period before the Civil Rights Movement in Texas, the history for Mexicans and Tejanos, the strictures they dealt with, but also the strength and creativity of this community. Malas is a music novel too, and the 1950s is when Tejano, like many genres of music, began to be influenced by rock ’n’ roll, which very much started the trajectory that led to the “Tejano Boom” of the 1990s, and Selena’s unique sound. The history of Tejano music is the history of this place.

  Lulu is an avid music fan and aspiring punk singer, and the book is peppered throughout with musical references, particularly to Tejano and norteño bands. If you were to create a soundtrack for readers to listen to while reading Malas, what songs would you include?

  For sure, “Hey Baby, Que Paso” by The Texas Tornados, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” by Selena, and so much Pedro Infante.

  Listen to Marcela Fuentes’ full Malas Spotify playlist!

  One powerful scene in the book occurs when Lulu’s father educates her about the various types of gritos in Mexican music and teaches her how to perform one. Could you tell us more about the importance of the grito?

  A grito is a vocal eruption of emotion—joy, grief, rage, love, pride—and sometimes the sound of rebellion. In music, it’s a cathartic yelling, amping up the emotion. And, as Lulu says in the novel, it’s a war cry. There’s a highly mythologized account of the “grito de Dolores” the cry of a priest to call his congregation to arms on the eve of Mexican Independence. The scene in the book is an important moment between Lulu and her father because music is one thing that remains a bond between them. Fraught as their relationship is, the heartbreaking thing is they actually love each other very deeply and they are quite similar personalities. I wanted this to be a moment of that love, a bit of closeness and vulnerability for both of them. He’s handing down a heritage to her, and it is a heritage of rebellion, though he doesn’t realize she wants to use it to rebel against him.

  Throughout the book, we observe Lulu grappling with the transition between girlhood and womanhood, something that is also symbolized by her impending quinceañera. What did you find the most challenging about telling the story of a protagonist who is navigating this particularly complicated time in one’s life?

  The most challenging part was going to that emotionally vulnerable place and trying to forget my adult consciousness, placing myself in the headspace of an angry, hurt kid. I kept having to remind myself that a 14-year-old can morph from child to adult, even moment to moment. Lulu’s a smart girl, overconfident in her abilities and toughness. Her feelings, much as she disavows them, are ardent and immediate and she doesn’t have the maturity or the parental guidance to process them.

  “[F]ind your writer friends. You’ll keep each other writing no matter what life throws at you.”

  With your debut novel under your belt, can you tell us what you’ll be working on next?

  I’m finishing a linked story collection called My Heart Has More Rooms Than a Whorehouse. It follows the members of an extended Latinx family and explores the pressure points of familial obligations and the complexities of love. A young boy from the barrio settles a wager his dead father made with a rich man. A sister tries to make sense of her brother’s career as a bull rider. A group of kids search for the bogeyman haunting their grandmother’s house. A suburban wife aches to understand her volatile husband. The people in these stories navigate the web of family allegiances while trying to find breathing space for themselves.

  You are a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and now teach Creative Writing at Texas Christian University. What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve received and now give to your students?

  The best piece of advice I got was that my writing community, writer friends, were the best thing I’d get from my M.F.A. I have a group of writer friends. I trust their eyes on my work, as they trust mine on theirs. I tell my students the same thing: find your writer friends. You’ll keep each other writing no matter what life throws at you.

• PEN America website - https://pen.org/marcela-fuentes-the-pen-ten-interview/

  Marcela Fuentes | The PEN Ten Interview
  Writing as Craft
  Aleah Gatto
  June 20, 2024
  Marcela Fuentes PEN Ten Hero Image
  Marcela Fuentes | The PEN Ten Interview
  By: Aleah Gatto | June 20, 2024

  Marcela Fuentes’ debut novel, Malas (Viking, 2024), defies tradition in more ways than one. At times a Márquezian saga spanning generations of a family, at others a modern teen punk romance, the story follows two tenacious female characters who are constantly at odds with the norm. Suffused with prose that masterfully glides between two languages, Fuentes delivers a vivid tale about identity, revenge, and womanhood.

  In conversation with PEN America’s Membership Engagement Manager, Aleah Gatto, for this week’s PEN Ten, Fuentes delves into her characters’ Tejano identity: its distinctiveness, its history, and how it creates a space where family, music, and language intersect. (Bookshop).

  1. The characters in Malas—their motivations and fears—feel so real. They almost feel like people you know: a father, a grandmother, a best friend. What planning went into building such robust characters?
  I spent a lot of time listening to my family and friends telling stories, talking about their relatives and spouses, listening not just to the story, but the way these stories were told, what assumptions or tenderness went into them, how love often mingled in with exasperation. I also spent a lot of time sitting in my characters—their thoughts, their desires and fears, their wishes. I wanted to understand what they wanted and what their natures were… what would be revealed about them through their reactions. My aim was to capture them with the openness not to judge them for their messiness, or even root for them sometimes, but to try to be accurate about who they are. It wasn’t so much what motivates the characters, but how they respond to their motivations too, and why, even if the “why” isn’t really on the page. I didn’t want to explain behavior, but I wanted it to feel realistic.

  2. At one point, Lulu Muñoz, a main character whose overarching dilemma involves her ill-boding quinceañera, inadvertently attests to the richness of her identity. She says, “Marina and I are not white or rich Mexican nationals, and we don’t have enough money to be Hispanics. Not American to the white ranching kids…Not Mexican enough for the fresas…We’re caught in the middle; we’re both and neither. We’re Tejanas.” What does it mean to be “both and neither?” Why is this nuance important?
  There’s such a lot of economic, colonial, and racialized hierarchies within this community, historical policies that continue to impact the region. Lulu articulates her limited awareness of these distinctions. It started back in 1848, with the Treaty of Hidalgo, when Texas became part of the United States and all the Mexicans living within Texas suddenly became U.S. citizens and began existing in the liminal space of being counted as “white” (all US citizens at the time were classified as white) on paper, but in practice, in daily life, were often racialized as mestizos and treated accordingly, unless they had money and/or fair skin—another intersectional situation. One more layer is the distinction between Mexican nationals and Tejanos and the complex relationship between the two, in terms of ethnic and nationalistic feeling. For Lulu, and for many living in these communities, it’s a sense of belonging to all and none, a third space which is uniquely of the region.

  “I also spent a lot of time sitting in my characters—their thoughts, their desires and fears, their wishes. I wanted to understand what they wanted and what their natures were… what would be revealed about them through their reactions. My aim was to capture them with the openness not to judge them for their messiness, or even root for them sometimes, but to try to be accurate about who they are.“

  3. Pilar Aguirre, the second central character, is a mysterious woman who fears that she has been cursed and, eventually, is feared to have the power to curse. What purpose do Pilar and curses serve in the story? In what ways do these themes intersect with real life?
  In some ways, being cursed is the easiest explanation for things that go wrong. For Pilar, her anxieties and insecurities solidify into this belief that she has been cursed. She accepts it as true, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. It can be a community belief that those who are cursed bring bad luck with them too. Also, it’s the kind of thing that can become family lore, perhaps a way to speak about generational trauma and patterns. In terms of real life, it can sometimes feel safer to blame a curse than actually be introspective or reflective about problems in real life.

  4. We can’t talk about Malas without talking about music. There is so much music in the book: from the countless genres of Mexican albums that Lulu’s father covets, to Lulu’s secret rock band, to the musicality of the prose, itself—music almost seems like its own character. Why did you decide to focus on music as a centralizing element?
  I love music and its ability to unify different people and generations. It’s also such a great artifact of time and place, a wonderful thing for memory and precise moments in history. As well, music is the voice of the people and social activism, a call to rebel, especially for both Lulu and her father. I wanted to showcase the music of the region and of the times as part of the richness of the culture.

  “In some ways, being cursed is the easiest explanation for things that go wrong. For Pilar, her anxieties and insecurities solidify into this belief that she has been cursed. She accepts it as true, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.“

  5. In the story’s dialogue and exposition, you seamlessly inlay Spanish words and expressions into the text, which is written primarily in English. What does it mean, to you, to incorporate both languages into your writing?
  Honestly, I grew up hearing and speaking Tex-Mex, so it wasn’t difficult to bring it into the book. For me, using both languages means being able to capture, in some part, an aspect of home.

  6. “Origin” may be a weighted term when asking about a story that meditates on identity through multiple generations. With that in mind, can you tell me about the origins of this story? Was there a specific moment where you said to yourself, “This is the story I’m going to write?”
  I started writing a fairytale in a graduate seminar. Somehow, it turned into the first chapter of the book. It went from a supernatural tale to being about the paranoia and insecurities of a woman about to give birth. However, it wasn’t until I began writing an entirely new perspective, Lulu, that I realized the story was a lot bigger. I needed to figure out how these two characters were connected to each other.

  7. The writing process often begins with a set purpose in mind—to answer a question, or to explore an idea. Was there anything you found out while writing Malas that you didn’t intend to learn?
  I won’t spoil the plot, but one thing that surprised me was finding out that true love, however brief the experience, can be the thing that influences the course of an entire life.

  8. If you placed Malas on a bookshelf, what books-–or authors—would you place it with?
  I would want to place it alongside Xochitl Gonzalez, Juan Rulfo, Sandra Cisneros, Helena Maria Viramontes, Rebecca Makkai, Kelly Link, Vanessa Chan, and Temim Fruchter.

  “It went from a supernatural tale to being about the paranoia and insecurities of a woman about to give birth. However, it wasn’t until I began writing an entirely new perspective, Lulu, that I realized the story was a lot bigger. I needed to figure out how these two characters were connected to each other.“

  9. If you had to choose one thing that readers take away from this story, what would it be?
  Honestly, I’d love readers to get a sense of Tejano culture, but more than that even, that for them to have a great time with the story.

  10. There’s a lot of controversy about the publishing industry’s lack of books by writers of color. What advice would you give to BIPOC writers when trying to get their work published?
  Write the book you want to read, and write the very best book you can! Also, don’t be afraid to go big—send your work out, and keep sending it. Go to summer writing conferences, use your community networks and resources, share advice and information with writer friends. Trust your vision and trust your work.

  Marcela Fuentes is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer and essayist. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was the 2016-2017 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Texas Highways Magazine, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Her debut novel MALAS (June 2024) and linked story collection MY HEART HAS MORE ROOMS THAN A WHOREHOUSE are forthcoming from Viking Books. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/2024/07/10/the-first-book-marcela-fuentes/

  The First Book: Marcela Fuentes
  Marcela FuentesJuly 10, 2024

  The Author: Marcela Fuentes
  The Book: Malas (Viking, 2024)
  The Elevator Pitch: A historical novel, family saga, and coming of age story set on the Texas–Mexico border, following the lives of two women.

  ***

  MALAS cover
  The Rumpus: Where did the idea of your book come from?

  Marcela Fuentes: It began as a fairytale in a graduate seminar I took at Iowa.

  Rumpus: How long did it take to write the book?

  Fuentes: Many years! Probably more than ten, though I wasn’t working on it the entire time. It took me a long time to commit myself to the book.

  Rumpus: Is this the first book you’ve written? If not, what made it the first to be published?

  Fuentes: Yes, though I was working on a story collection at the same time (and sold it as well).

  Rumpus: In submitting the book, how many no’s did you get before your yes?

  Fuentes: I was incredibly lucky. My book went to auction and sold in twelve days.

  Rumpus: Which authors/writers buoyed you along the way? How?

  Fuentes: Mentors/teachers: Elizabeth McCracken and especially Manuel Muñoz. Both of them are incredibly thoughtful and generous readers.

  Rumpus: How did your book change over the course of working on it?

  Fuentes: I first thought I was writing a supernatural horror story. Then I thought I needed to write in a male perspective, but it turned out to be about real horrors and the lives of two women.

  Rumpus: Before your first book, where has your work been published?

  Fuentes: Indiana Review, The Rumpus (!), Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and others.

  Rumpus: What is the best advice someone gave you about publishing?

  Fuentes: Don’t try to predict what people want to read; write what you want to write.

  Rumpus: Who’s the reader you’re writing to—or tell us about your target audience and how you cultivated or found it?

  Fuentes: I’m writing for anyone who likes a messy, drama-filled story with secrets and hilarious family problems, but also for my Latinx community.

  Rumpus: What is one completely unexpected thing that surprised you about the process of getting your book published?

  Fuentes: Being on Good Morning America and everything about being their book club pick.

Malas

Marcela Fuentes. Viking, $29 (384p) ISBN 978-0-593-65578-8

Fuentes debuts with the astonishing story of two malas, women who challenge traditional Mexican gender norms. The year is 1951 and Pilar Aguirre, who is eight months pregnant with her second child, has recently joined her husband, Jose Alfredo, in the Texas border town of Barrio Caimanes, where he works as a cowboy. While Pilar is visiting her friend Romi Munoz, a mysterious older woman shows up and claims to be Jose's first wife. Soon afterward, Pilar goes into labor and has a stillbirth, which she attributes to a curse put on her by the older woman. A parallel narrative set in 1994 La Cienega, Tex., follows Lucha "Lulu" Munoz, Romi's angsty teen granddaughter, who plays in a punk band called Pink Vomit without her father Julio's knowledge. For his part, Julio worries Lulu will become a mala ("For a Mexican man, a mala is the worst"). After Romi dies in her sleep, Lulu meets Pilar at her grandmother's funeral. Later, the two become friends and bond over Tejano music, leading to the revelation of family secrets. Fuentes is a seamless storyteller: the narrative is rich in Mexican culture and fully realized characterizations, especially the defiant Lulu and the overbearing Julio. Fans of Ana Castillo and Erika Sanchez will be thrilled. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (June)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Malas." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 15, 15 Apr. 2024, pp. 29+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799108395/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ebc724b9. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Fuentes, Marcela MALAS Viking (Fiction None) $29.00 6, 4 ISBN: 9780593655788

An entrancing debut novel set in a "dinky little border town" on the Texas side of the Rio Grande links the stories of two women, one a young wife and mother in the 1950s and the other a 14-year-old in 1994.

Both are considered malas by those around them, bad girls who are "willful and didn't listen." In 1951, Pilar Aguirre, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Mexican man, has moved to the United States with her handsome charro husband, José, and is shocked when an older woman approaches her house saying she herself is José's wife. The woman puts a curse on Pilar, which seems to come true when two of Pilar and José's children die. Despite the help provided by her sensible older comadre, Romi, Pilar is unable to cope with her situation. Four decades later, Lulu Muñoz--whose mother died in a motorcycle accident when she was 5--is being raised by a loving but alcoholic father along with her grandmother Romi. Lead singer in a punk band, Lulu is ambivalent about her upcoming quinceañera, with its frills and gaudy ceremony, until she forms a close relationship with the glamorous and mysterious Pilar, who has returned to town after decades away and comes up with a surprising scheme for the party. While the sections of the novel set in the '90s are the liveliest, full of the complicated details of being a teenager pulled by tradition and pop culture, romance and independence, the briefer sections set in the '50s provide a sense of context and of the differences and similarities between the two young women as Fuentes cunningly reveals the unexpected ties that bind them.

A vibrant portrait of two strong women and their mixed feelings about home.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Fuentes, Marcela: MALAS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A791877042/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=339490c8. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Malas. By Marcela Fuentes. June 2024. 384P. Viking, $29 (9780593655788); e-book (9780593655795).

The bad-ass women in Fuentes' debut novel swagger and stagger through alternating time lines that wrap around and wring each other out like wet laundry in a Tejana's (Texan woman's) strong hands. Pilar has settled in the Texas border town of La Cienega in 1951 with her new husband, a handsome, hardworking Mexican charro. Feeling unwelcome in view of signs proclaiming, "No dogs or Mexicans," Pilar finds a good friend in her neighbor Romi, until a traumatic chain of events is set off by a mysterious old loca's curse. In 1994, a high-school sophomore facing an unwanted quinceanera, narrates in her angry, compelling teenage voice. Lulu also plays in a punk band she doesn't want her hypocritical Mexican dad finding out about. Her non-boyfriend Ernie, her abuela Romi, her own essential friends Marina and Pilar all help her wrangle her way through chaos and heartbreak. Fuen tes incorporates mucha Chicana Tex-Mex historia and musica (Freddy Fender, Selena), weaving Spanish words and phrases throughout with the ease of border-crossing during the times she depicts. Both strong women prevail through the power of comadrazgo (sisterhood) in this triumphant novel that lyrically portrays the costumbres (customs) of a border culture starkly different from the one seen on today's news.--Sara Martinez YA: Teens, especially young women, will find insight and inspiration in Lulu's experiences and thrill to Pilars struggles and ultimate vindication. SM.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Martinez, Sara. "Malas." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 18, 18 May 2024, p. 30. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804017457/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9a18622f. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

In Marcela Fuentes's novel, ''Malas,'' a troubled teenager finds refuge in music and in a recluse with a dark history.

MALAS, by Marcela Fuentes

Selena, the ''Queen of Tejano Music,'' appears in an enthralling scene in Marcela Fuentes's debut novel, ''Malas.'' At a show just weeks before she was murdered, the singer performs ''¿Qué Creías?,'' a mariachi ballad in which a wronged woman tells off a man who thinks she'll stay with him. For the novel's teenage protagonist, Lulu MunÌãoz, it's a moment of perfect bliss and belonging that comes after her own defiance against the man looming over her life: her father, who forbids concerts and thinks teenage girls shouldn't be ''out running the streets.''

Set in La Cienega, Texas, a fictional town on the U.S.-Mexico border, ''Malas'' follows the intertwined lives of 14-year-old Lulu, who has a passion for punk despite her Selena fandom, and Pilar Aguirre, an elegant and mysterious recluse. Their stories begin decades apart -- Pilar's in 1951 and Lulu's in 1994 -- but meet in an unlikely friendship after Lulu's grandmother's funeral, where Pilar's unwelcome appearance stirs Lulu's curiosity.

Ever since Lulu's mother died in an accident eight years earlier, her father has been spiraling into alcoholism and isolation, leaving Lulu to parent herself. A fiercely independent yet sensitive girl, Lulu finds refuge in her punk-norteÃño band and in her friendship with Pilar, until old family secrets come to light. Though her father had always attributed their family tragedies to an old curse, Lulu discovers that there is more to their misfortunes than magic or luck.

Lulu is a remarkably mature child who manages to get good grades despite ditching school often and sneaking out of her house late at night. Her father, a former Chicano activist, inserts himself into her life just enough to posture at parenthood or fuel family dramas. Fuentes's older characters are flawed, often immature people struggling through traumas, addictions and all manner of bad decisions. It's the young ones, especially girls and women, who are expected to bear the burden of generations' worth of consequences.

The title of the book, ''Malas,'' is a play on the pervasive ''bad woman'' stereotype, which Lulu tells us is her father's great fear. ''If he's not watching out, I might become a mala,'' she says. ''And for a Mexican man, a mala is the worst.'' Pilar has long been stigmatized as a mala, with rumors -- including infanticide -- circulating outside her secluded hilltop home. Even her vanity marks her as a bad woman, recalling an iconic mala of Pilar's generation, the Mexican actress María Félix. Pilar, too, has the haughtiness of a diva who refuses to fade in her twilight years, her high-arched eyebrows ever alert to the trespasses of men.

Fuentes's borderlands make up a heterogenous landscape where cultural, ethnic and national identities converge and new ones are forged. ''There are names for everybody and rules for the names,'' Lulu says, and proceeds to rattle off a roster: naco, fresa, Chicano, Mexican, Mexican American, Hispanic. Add to these labels punk, metal head, stoner, Goth, New Wave, skater, marijuano and heavy-metal Satanist. Lulu loves them all.

They are part of a gently historicized portrait of the border, which Fuentes reminds us is a fluid space, but was as porous as river sand in the 1990s: ''It was narrow, but men and women slipped back and forth across the border, shoes in hand, and hardly more than wet trouser cuffs to show for it.'' Today, those attempting to cross it face a militarized instrument of death.

''Malas'' is an antidote for the hard-line essentialism that has made this world an intolerant, violent place. Fuentes humanizes seemingly insoluble conflicts, both generational and cultural, with imperfect characters who are just doing their best, even when they know they are screwing up. She gives them something that many of us nonfictional people living and messing up in the world could use, and give back -- grace.

MALAS | By Marcela Fuentes | Viking | 373 pp. | $29

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Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The New York Times Company
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Fragoza, Carribean. "Going Rogue." The New York Times Book Review, 7 July 2024, p. 21. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800312281/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c0820f39. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

"Malas." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 15, 15 Apr. 2024, pp. 29+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799108395/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ebc724b9. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. "Fuentes, Marcela: MALAS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A791877042/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=339490c8. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. Martinez, Sara. "Malas." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 18, 18 May 2024, p. 30. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804017457/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9a18622f. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. Fragoza, Carribean. "Going Rogue." The New York Times Book Review, 7 July 2024, p. 21. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800312281/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c0820f39. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

• BookPage
  https://www.bookpage.com/reviews/malas-marcela-fuentes-book-review/
  Word count: 389

  STARRED REVIEW
  June 03, 2024
  Malas
  By Marcela Fuentes
  Review by Stephenie Harrison
  With her debut novel, Malas, Marcela Fuentes puts her own electrifying spin on the legend of La Llorona (the Weeping Woman), turning it into a fiery family epic teeming with rage, revenge and revolution.
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  The legend of La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) has endured for centuries in Latinx culture, with roots tracing back to 1500s Mexico. A malevolent spirit who drowned her children after discovering her husband’s infidelity, La Llorona now roams the Earth cursing all who encounter her with lifelong misfortune and unhappiness. With her debut novel, Malas, Marcela Fuentes puts her own electrifying spin on this tale, updating it for the 21st century into a fiery family epic teeming with rage and revenge.

  Set in the dusty border town of La Cienega, Texas, Malas follows two social outcasts separated by decades yet bound together in a surprising way. In 1951, Pilar Aguirre, mother to a young son and expecting her second child, is cursed by a crone who claims to be married to Pilar’s husband. The discord sown by this encounter ricochets through the subsequent weeks, months and years, rending relationships and ruining lives. Forty years later, another mysterious old woman appears in town, this time causing an uproar at the funeral of Lulu Muñoz’s grandmother. Headstrong and seeking to annoy her domineering father, 14-year-old Lulu strikes up a clandestine relationship with the stranger; as friendship blossoms and their connection deepens, the devastating way in which the two are linked gradually comes to light, dredging up old secrets that threaten to throw La Cienega into chaos once again.

  Readers will devour Malas. Fuentes’ propulsive plotting; rich and precise depiction of Tejano culture; complex characters; and thoughtful exploration of female anger, grief and intergenerational trauma combine to form a fully immersive reading experience that—for all its specificity—will be compelling and meaningful to readers of all backgrounds. Brimming with brio, Fuentes’ deliciously defiant debut breathes new life into classic lore and heralds the arrival of a bold new literary powerhouse.

  “[O]vercoming generational trauma might sometimes be related to not accepting a fate-driven narrative.” Read our Q&A with Marcela Fuentes about Malas.

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