"The first witch of the waters was born in Destruction. The moon named her Maria."
In Marytza K. Rubio’s genre-defying debut collection of short stories, the characters—which span from women to animals to the moon—negotiate with nature, invoking Mexican American myths, mystics, and magic. Maria, Maria & Other Stories stretches across the Americas, reimagines the boundaries of reality and fiction, and expands upon the spaces between life and death.
This imaginative collection invokes Mexican American mystics, magical beasts and dystopic jungles in 10 stories that remind us “there’s always a price for conjuring in darkness.”
Rubio confects her moving, disturbing, and intense stories in a variety of styles, voices, and tones, from dark parody to heart-wrenching, grotesque, and violent yet touching.
Many of these 10 tales defy categorization and blur genre boundaries. A duo searches the multiverse to find meaning in senseless death in “Carlos Across Space and Time.” “Brujería for Beginners” sees a magical teacher attempting to steer an unruly class. Generations of Marias work to make sense of their legacies and supernatural abilities within a dystopic jungle in “Maria, Maria.”