I think what happened to people like me who grew up in the 80s and 90s is that slasher movies, Stephen King and Twin Peaks all got mixed with our rea… - Mariana Enriquez

to a large extent, this is the fear that I summon and depict, a feeling of simultaneous imminence and abandonment that is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.

When I’m asked who I am, I say, “I am a Latin American.” The experience of being born and living in my country shaped me as a person — often a problematic one — and as a writer. I am a Latin American woman, which also implies a number of challenges: growing up without laws that allowed us to make decisions about our bodies (those laws exist now, but I am 50 years old) and fighting in a labor market that, in addition to being sexist, is scant and limited. Not only are jobs given to men because they are men, but because there is a lot of unemployment in general, and the chain breaks at its weakest link.

I grew up in a shadowy world where death was all around, but it was secret — disappearances have all the direct cruelty of sadism, as well as a particular aura of the sinister unknown.