Visceral by Maria Fernanda Ampuero

Year of publication: 2024

Valuation: Highly recommended

And not, Visceral It is not a book of short stories, nor is it even a book of fiction; and it is not a book of fantasy or horror genre, although anyone who has read the stories of Human sacrifices will recognize the obvious continuities in the author’s concerns: colonialism and migration, violence against women and machismo…. In fact, as the text itself Visceral says at a certain point, horror is a genre that expresses the Zeitgeistthe fears and anxieties of each era.

And Visceral It is not a book of stories, nor of fiction, So what is it? Well, one of those books that are often described as “unclassifiable” due to their hybrid nature and textual diversity. With chapters that are close to essays or chronicles, others to memoirs or diaries, and some, yes, also close to stories, or even poetic prose. In many of the chapters, or fragments, we also enter the realm of what is rather vaguely called “autofiction”, or “narratives of the self”, as Pozuelo Yvancos called them, since the narrator and protagonist shares many characteristics (name, origin, life experiences) with María Fernanda Ampuero herself.

What gives unity to the book is, then, a theme that mutates into different manifestations: violence, injustice, abuse or inequality, whether in the coordinates of race, class, gender or sexual orientation, in relation to non-normative bodies or to neurodivergent people. There is, in fact, I seem to perceive, a plan or structure in the development of the book, which begins by dealing with issues of coloniality and imperialism (although with a gender perspective that Galeano, for example, does not have, of course), then introduces the issue of migration, obviously related to the previous one, and through this theme the theme of the family, fatphobia, gender violence are introduced, finally ending in a more private, almost intimate register, also chronologically closer: that of the pandemic and the post-pandemic, and its effects on people’s mental (and obviously physical) health.

I confess that it took me a while to get into the book, probably because I was surprised at not reading the book I was expecting, and also because the first texts on colonial violence seemed a little less original to me. But I didn’t even have to get halfway through for texts like “Mórbida” or “Gorda” (whose theme is not difficult to deduce) to convince me that I was in front of a great book. A visceral book, as its title indicates, a bomb of rage and denunciation in which the honesty and justice of its claims are allied with a powerful language and a remarkable stylistic malleability. In short, a great read that adds new facets to the career of a fundamental writer.

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