Bruja: A Dreamoir

by Wendy C. Ortiz

The dreamscape of a haunted and hopeful woman, back in print

 

Dubbed a “dreamoir,” Bruja is a bold and harrowing journey through the dream worlds of Wendy C. Ortiz. Sister memoir to Hollywood Notebook, it catalogs the happenings of the strange visions of the past warped by present-day inklings; animals running loose, never where they should be; familiar nature and architecture made malleable and new. Ortiz’s subconscious is bared in full on these pages as the author interrogates her histories. We bravely adventure into new literary form, walking the parallel plane of Ortiz’s waking life alongside her. Where the self is anchored in the deepest recesses of the mind, Ortiz invites us to push the boundaries of the subconscious and enter into the dreamoir.

232 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025

About the author

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015), and the dreamoir Bruja (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such venues as The New York Times, Joyland, StoryQuarterly, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Most recently her “Urban Liminal” series of texts appear alongside signature graphic representations of the projects of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in the book Amplified Urbanism (2017). Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.

Visit Wendy at wendycortiz.tumblr.com or at her website, wendyortiz.com.

Reviews

[Nicholas Perez]

This is apparently a forthcoming republication of Bruja.