We Are Only Shadows — Pergentino José

Amidst a smallpox outbreak that threatens to decimate the population of a Zapotec community, Lisnit and Néstor must fight to make their love possible. Victims of state violence, the lovers grapple with the traumas of the wrath inflicted upon their bodies and their memory. After Red Ants, his celebrated collection of short stories, Pergentino José has written a first novel in which Spanish, inoculated from one language to another—Zapotec—acquires a unique vitality and rhythm.

Constructed from ellipses and fragments, We Are Only Shadows is a book about the opacity of memory, the veils that time draws over it, and the destiny of evanescence to which it condemns us. With a stylistic strategy as risky as it is precise, José offers us the outlines of an intense plot; the shadow in which, thanks to its density and lyricism, we are able to recognize urgent themes for our societies: the colonial past, the displacement of entire communities for the extraction of natural resources, the annihilation of non-capitalist cosmogonies, and the trauma of dispossession and misery that these processes entail.

No. of Pages: 120 / Dimensions: 21.5 cm (Height) x 14.5 cm (Width)

ISBN: 9786078851300