Malas

Starred review from April 15, 2024
Fuentes debuts with the astonishing story of two malas, or 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 Muñoz, 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” Muñoz, 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.

May 1, 2024
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, Jos�, and is shocked when an older woman approaches her house saying she herself is Jos�'s wife. The woman puts a curse on Pilar, which seems to come true when two of Pilar and Jos�'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 Mu�oz--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 quincea�era, 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.

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Starred review from May 15, 2024
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 quincea�era, 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. Fuentes incorporates mucha Chicana Tex-Mex historia and m�sica (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.

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