Contemporary Fiction

Juan Villoro’s “The Guilty” Decenters What It Means To Be Mexican
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Juan Villoro’s “The Guilty” Decenters What It Means To Be Mexican

ByDaniel Peña

Last month I found myself in the gardening section of a German supermarket where, on sale, I came across Mexican-themed cacti. Tiny, impossibly hairy things with googly eyes and black moustaches and pastel colored sombreros made of clay. Typical German kitsch. “That looks like my uncle Mario,” I thought. That moustache. Those manic eyes like,…

Between Optimism and Pessimism: How to Set Our Baby Monitors?
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Between Optimism and Pessimism: How to Set Our Baby Monitors?

ByAlex Chertok

Pessimism is not particularly hard. I thought of this last month when I spent an hour in my brother’s kitchen near the baby monitor through which I could hear my poor twenty-two-month-old niece hacking up phlegm. After an hour I began to mistake this noise for the wind, or for my own thoughts. Moments of…