by Karla Marrufo (Author), Allison A. Defreese (Translator)
In her most experimental work to date, Karla Marrufo Huchim explores universal themes with appreciable specificity: loneliness, family angst, memory loss--from a perspective belonging singularly to a native of the Yucatán Peninsula. Mayo's unnamed narrator is an older woman, isolated in her domestic life, who is both suffering from memory loss and intent on recounting the lives of three generations of her family. The Yucatán culture and community that Marrufo Huchim describes through her narrator's fine but faltering mind will be foreign but not fetishized for American readers.
Author Biography
Karla Marrufo Huchim holds a Doctorate in Hispanic-American Literature from the Universidad Veracruzana. Her work has been recognized with several prestigious literary awards, including: the 2005-2007 National Wilberto Cantón Award in Playwriting; the XVI José Díaz Bolio Poetry Prize for La Ciudad en Ti (Centro Cultural ProHispen, 2016); and the 2014 National Dolores Castro in Narration for her novel Mayo. She received a fellowship from the Program for the Encouragement of Creation and Artistic Development in Yucatán, which resulted in the publication of her book Mérida lo Invisible (published under the title Arquitecturas de lo Invisible in its second printing).
Allison A. deFreese has translated works by María Negroni, Luis Chitarroni, Amado Nervo, and other Latin American writers. Her writing and literary translations have appeared in 60 magazines and journals, including: Asymptote, Solstice, The New York Quarterly, Quick Fiction, and Southwestern American Literature.