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Flesh to Bone
Rooted in a Chicana/Latina/indigenous geographic and cultural sensibility, the stories of flesh to bone take on the force of myth, old and new, giving voice to those who experience the disruption and violence of the borderlands. In these nine tales, Silva metes out a furious justice—a whirling, lyrical energy—that scatters the landscape with bones of transformation, reclamation, and healing.
…An original and authentic voice…with a unique vision. A blend of indigenismo and folktales retold in a modern vein…these stories come from the clouds, from spirits of ancient ancestors, from the oblique corners of the human consciousness…A new and engaging duende is born. —Alejandro Murguia, author of This War Called Love
If Chagall had written, he would have painted words in the fierce brushstrokes of ire’ne lara silva’s stories. If Remedios Varo had told stories, she would have wound the tendrils of her magic the way ire’ne lara silva paints her world. —Cecile Pineda, author Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step
ire’ne lara silva writes about what’s between dark shadow and daylight, when, as on the Day of the Dead, we are so aware of the sacred. Though fiction, ire’ne’s prose seems to transform into chanting verse. —Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories
In her brilliant fiction debut, flesh to bone, ire’ne lara silva uses hauntingly lyrical language to tell stories cast in the Latin American tradition of Juan Rulfo and Maria Luisa Bombal. But, do not mistake this work for magical realism. The fantastical elements, raw voices, and shifting realities inhabit an emotional, psychological, and all-too-physical landscape of loss and violence. Life-affirming and intense, the stories sweep us into another world where we come face to face with the deepest truths. Brava! —Norma Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera
…An original and authentic voice…with a unique vision. A blend of indigenismo and folktales retold in a modern vein…these stories come from the clouds, from spirits of ancient ancestors, from the oblique corners of the human consciousness…A new and engaging duende is born. —Alejandro Murguia, author of This War Called Love
If Chagall had written, he would have painted words in the fierce brushstrokes of ire’ne lara silva’s stories. If Remedios Varo had told stories, she would have wound the tendrils of her magic the way ire’ne lara silva paints her world. —Cecile Pineda, author Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step
ire’ne lara silva writes about what’s between dark shadow and daylight, when, as on the Day of the Dead, we are so aware of the sacred. Though fiction, ire’ne’s prose seems to transform into chanting verse. —Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories
In her brilliant fiction debut, flesh to bone, ire’ne lara silva uses hauntingly lyrical language to tell stories cast in the Latin American tradition of Juan Rulfo and Maria Luisa Bombal. But, do not mistake this work for magical realism. The fantastical elements, raw voices, and shifting realities inhabit an emotional, psychological, and all-too-physical landscape of loss and violence. Life-affirming and intense, the stories sweep us into another world where we come face to face with the deepest truths. Brava! —Norma Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
172 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2013
About the author
Ire'ne Lara Silva
19 books35 followersire’ne lara silva is the author of two chapbooks: ani’mal and INDíGENA. Her first collection of poetry, furia, was published by Mouthfeel Press in October 2010 and received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Her first collection of short stories, flesh to bone, was published by Aunt Lute Press in 2013. flesh to bone received the 2013 Premio Aztlan, placed 2ND for the 2014 TEJAS NACCS FOCO Award in Fiction, and was a Finalist for ForeWard Review’s Book of the Year Award in Multicultural Fiction. flesh to bone was also selected as the May 2014 Book of the Month for the National Latino Book Club/Las Comadres.
A new digital, English-Spanish bilingual chapbook titled Enduring Azucares was published June 2015 by Sibling Rivalry Press, and Saddle Road Press recently published her second full-length collection of poetry, Blood Sugar Canto, in January 2016.
She is the 2014 Recipient of the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the 2013 Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s Gift of Freedom, the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award, a Macondo member, and a 2010 Cantomundo Inaugural Fellow. From 2004 to 2008, she was the Executive Coordinator for the Macondo Writing Workshop/Macondo Foundation. She and Moises S. L. Lara were co-coordinators for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival (2011-2015). http://flordenopalliteraryfestival.wo...
ire’ne’s poetry, short stories and essays have appeared in more than fifty journals and anthologies, including Acentos Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Mas Tequila Review, PilgrimageCIPACTLI, Kweli Journal, The Worcester Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Palabra, The Weight of Addition: Texas Poetry Anthology, Improbable Worlds Anthology, Beat Texas Poetry Anthology, Turtle Island to Abya Yala: A Love Anthology of Art and Poetry by Native American and Latina Women,and in the forthcoming New Border Voices.
ire’ne and Dan Vera are the co-editors of IMANIMAN: Poets Writing on the Anzalduan Borderlands, an anthology of essays, poetry and hybrids of the two, published by Aunt Lute Books in 2017.
via https://irenelarasilva.wordpress.com/
A new digital, English-Spanish bilingual chapbook titled Enduring Azucares was published June 2015 by Sibling Rivalry Press, and Saddle Road Press recently published her second full-length collection of poetry, Blood Sugar Canto, in January 2016.
She is the 2014 Recipient of the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the 2013 Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s Gift of Freedom, the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award, a Macondo member, and a 2010 Cantomundo Inaugural Fellow. From 2004 to 2008, she was the Executive Coordinator for the Macondo Writing Workshop/Macondo Foundation. She and Moises S. L. Lara were co-coordinators for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival (2011-2015). http://flordenopalliteraryfestival.wo...
ire’ne’s poetry, short stories and essays have appeared in more than fifty journals and anthologies, including Acentos Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Mas Tequila Review, PilgrimageCIPACTLI, Kweli Journal, The Worcester Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Palabra, The Weight of Addition: Texas Poetry Anthology, Improbable Worlds Anthology, Beat Texas Poetry Anthology, Turtle Island to Abya Yala: A Love Anthology of Art and Poetry by Native American and Latina Women,and in the forthcoming New Border Voices.
ire’ne and Dan Vera are the co-editors of IMANIMAN: Poets Writing on the Anzalduan Borderlands, an anthology of essays, poetry and hybrids of the two, published by Aunt Lute Books in 2017.
via https://irenelarasilva.wordpress.com/
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 6, 2014
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the March 6, 2014 edition of The Monitor.
Recently the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies announced its 2014 Tejas Foco Awards, and many deserving authors were awarded, including our native sons Xavier Garza and Isaac Chavarría, as well as UTPA professor Marci McMahon. It also happens that a book I’ve been reading — flesh to bone by South Texas poet ire’ne lara silva — was selected Honorable Mention winner for the Tejas Foco Fiction Award.
The author of two chapbooks and a collection of poetry, silva tries her hand at short stories in flesh to bone, with amazing results: nine haunting, beautiful and harrowing tales that emerge from a familiar yet alien place at the intersection of magical realism, fantasy and lyrical verse.
In “hunger/hambre/mayantli” a mother struggles with two unusual children: a thin son whose dreams are full of inexplicable hunger and a daughter who cannot stop the flood of seemingly random Spanish words that tumble from her lips. The siblings together manage to give release to a ghost, unleashing strange secrets of their own. The tense “hiding-place” retells the cucuy legend with nail-biting claustrophobia.
I don’t want to give away the reveal, but “cortando las nubes” retells a very famous legend from a wholly unexpectedand heart-wrenching perspective. In “duérmete,” a nurse who was once victim of terrible spousal abuse finds magical release with the help of an elderly patient of hers.
The many Mexican myths of supernatural owls are blended in the unforgettable “tecolotl,” in which a shape-shifting woman who has lost her love and her unborn child must make an impossible choice. A mother has a final chance to make amends with her dying daughter and understand her hermit brother in “thorn forest.” The plight of las desaparecidas of Juárez is explored in “la huesera” as a ghostly entity attempts to reknit the broken body of a victim, absorbing her story along the way.
The consequences of taking a goddess for a lover are interwoven with the tragic story of an immigrant family in the sensual yet heart-breaking “desembocada/the mouth of the river.” And finally, a pregnant woman risks her child and her happiness to take care of her dying father, only to discover horribly truths that leave her bereft.
With a wholly original voice that interweaves sacred and mundane, light and shadow, lyric and realism, inner life and vast landscape into an unforgettable tapestry, ire’ne lara silva emerges in the volume from the mists of folklore and custom to establish herself as an important and necessary figure of Texas letters.
Recently the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies announced its 2014 Tejas Foco Awards, and many deserving authors were awarded, including our native sons Xavier Garza and Isaac Chavarría, as well as UTPA professor Marci McMahon. It also happens that a book I’ve been reading — flesh to bone by South Texas poet ire’ne lara silva — was selected Honorable Mention winner for the Tejas Foco Fiction Award.
The author of two chapbooks and a collection of poetry, silva tries her hand at short stories in flesh to bone, with amazing results: nine haunting, beautiful and harrowing tales that emerge from a familiar yet alien place at the intersection of magical realism, fantasy and lyrical verse.
In “hunger/hambre/mayantli” a mother struggles with two unusual children: a thin son whose dreams are full of inexplicable hunger and a daughter who cannot stop the flood of seemingly random Spanish words that tumble from her lips. The siblings together manage to give release to a ghost, unleashing strange secrets of their own. The tense “hiding-place” retells the cucuy legend with nail-biting claustrophobia.
I don’t want to give away the reveal, but “cortando las nubes” retells a very famous legend from a wholly unexpectedand heart-wrenching perspective. In “duérmete,” a nurse who was once victim of terrible spousal abuse finds magical release with the help of an elderly patient of hers.
The many Mexican myths of supernatural owls are blended in the unforgettable “tecolotl,” in which a shape-shifting woman who has lost her love and her unborn child must make an impossible choice. A mother has a final chance to make amends with her dying daughter and understand her hermit brother in “thorn forest.” The plight of las desaparecidas of Juárez is explored in “la huesera” as a ghostly entity attempts to reknit the broken body of a victim, absorbing her story along the way.
The consequences of taking a goddess for a lover are interwoven with the tragic story of an immigrant family in the sensual yet heart-breaking “desembocada/the mouth of the river.” And finally, a pregnant woman risks her child and her happiness to take care of her dying father, only to discover horribly truths that leave her bereft.
With a wholly original voice that interweaves sacred and mundane, light and shadow, lyric and realism, inner life and vast landscape into an unforgettable tapestry, ire’ne lara silva emerges in the volume from the mists of folklore and custom to establish herself as an important and necessary figure of Texas letters.
April 12, 2024
these stories are beautifully written and rooted in the most interesting myths. however, i don't think i am the target reader for them. they blended in with each other and i lost track of the plot in most. some were better than others- i am still haunted by la llorona in 'cortando las nubes'. will probably have to revisit these in a couple years.
February 3, 2015
This book is smart, & heartbreaking & rough in that good good way. Silva takes you on a journey with each of these stories.
September 18, 2024
honestly this was such a difficult read. Silva writes in such a personal matter that I found it quite hard to relate and understand what she was entirely talking about. the only chapter that made sense was, hiding place, and maybe that’s cause the main character actually had an interesting level of awareness and that chapter could’ve continued on fr!!!! All the other chapters felt like they were all over the place and genuinely couldn’t keep up. I wish i got it truly, but damn this was hard af.
May 14, 2023
Really beautiful and haunting. Some really sad stuff and some awesome representation here. But also very confusing at times? Some stories were better than others. Some that stick out are the cucuy story, the owl one, and the one about the girl whose baby liked the stepmom more than her.
April 2, 2019
Short stories are usually unhappy and this book was no exception.
Read for a class
Read for a class
May 12, 2021
Beautiful poetry, powerful stories. A living breathing tradition of powerful legends recovered, reshaped, reincarnated.
September 23, 2024
read for school 👍🏻 beautiful words
December 30, 2020
Powerfully emotional collection of poems. Read for Mexican American Chicano/a Lit class
April 12, 2022
Silva is one of the most overlooked poets out there. Her work is searing, important and makes no apologies. All for this. I'm all about this.
November 26, 2022
One of my all-time favorite short story collections. The use of language and the way Lara Silva sets mood and tone are original and evocative.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews