WINNER OF THE WHITING AWARD
PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
One of the year's most anticipated books by The Millions, Colorlines
and Remezcla, and recommended by the A.V. Club!
Carribean Fragoza's debut collection of stories reside in the domestic
surreal, featuring an unusual gathering of Latinx and Chicanx voices
from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, and universes beyond.
"Eat the Mouth That Feeds You is an accomplished debut with language
that has the potential to affect the reader on a visceral level, a
rare and significant achievement from a forceful new voice in American
literature."--Kali Fajardo-Anstine, New York Times Book Review,
and author of Sabrina and Corina
Carribean Fragoza's imperfect characters are drawn with a sympathetic
tenderness as they struggle against circumstances and conditions
designed to defeat them. A young woman returns home from college, only
to pick up exactly where she left off: a smart girl in a rundown town
with no future. A mother reflects on the pain and pleasures of being
inexorably consumed by her small daughter, whose penchant for ingesting
grandma's letters has extended to taking bites of her actual flesh. A
brother and sister watch anxiously as their distraught mother takes an
ax to their old furniture, and then to the backyard fence, until finally
she attacks the family's beloved lime tree.
Victories are excavated from the rubble of personal hardship, and
women's wisdom is brutally forged from the violence of history that
continues to unfold on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
"Eat the Mouth that Feeds You renders the feminine grotesque at its
finest."--Myriam Gurba, author of Mean
"Eat the Mouth that Feeds You will establish Fragoza as an essential
and important new voice in American fiction."--Héctor Tobar, author
of The Barbarian Nurseries
"Fierce and feminist, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You is a soul-quaking
literary force."--Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, The Foreword, *Starred
Review
". . . a work of power and a darkly brilliant talisman that enlarges in
necessary ways the feminist, Latinx, and Chicanx canons."--Wendy Ortiz,
***Alta Magazine
"Fragoza's surreal and gothic stories, focused on Latinx, Chicanx, and
immigrant women's voices, are sure to surprise and move readers."--Zoe
Ruiz, The Millions
"This collection of visceral, often bone-chilling stories centers the
liminal world of Latinos in Southern California while fraying reality at
its edges. Full of horror and wonder."--Kirkus Reviews, *Starred
Review
"Fragoza's debut collection delivers expertly crafted tales of Latinx
people trying to make sense of violent, dark realities. Magical realism
and gothic horror make for effective stylistic entryways, as Fragoza
seamlessly blurs the lines between the corporeal and the
abstract."--Publishers Weekly
"The magic realism of Eat the Mouth that Feeds You is thoroughly
worked into the fabric of the stories themselves . . . a wonderful
debut."--Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the
World
