5 books written by women to say goodbye to March

March is about to end and to say goodbye we have five recent books by authors from Mexico, France, Cuba and England. This time, these are stories written in different contexts, in which women play an important role.
On the one hand, for example, there is a novel that narrates how the first years of the Colony in Mexico were, inspired by real characters and events. In another story, in the north of the country, near a passing hotel in Torreón, Coahuila, poetry brings together a group of teenagers who recite verses in a vacant lot.
Another work brings together 11 stories that come from Cuba, in which the author recreates the neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie that are about to face the revolutionary changes on the island. Meanwhile, in England, an Afro-descendant woman begins to question her existence in a society that calls itself open and multicultural.

In Political Animal, this Sunday we leave you our recommendations.
‘Your tongue in my mouth’
In Your tongue in my mouth (Random House Literature, 2022), the lawyer and writer Luisa Reyes Retana presents a novel in which poetry is responsible for uniting a series of women in a fortuitous encounter near a vacant lot.
Reyes Retana narrates the life of Berta, a woman who after living 30 years with her aunt is separated from her and must fulfill one last wish: to take the ashes of Ligia, her aunt, to the Zone of Silence, a desert site between Coahuila, Durango and Chihuahua, after seeing a report in the morning newspaper.

On her journey to the Zone of Silence, Berta will meet a group of teenagers who gather in a vacant lot to recite poetry, an inevitable moment that will make her want to live life again.
‘The Captain’s Decision’
In this book, Francesca Gargallo (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2021) relives the early years of the Colony in Mexico. The captain’s decision is a story inspired by real historical characters and events. In addition, it includes testimonies of the time.
In the novel, Gargallo talks about what was in store for the Chichimeca people after the Spanish conquest, in the face of a turn of domination and changes in social, political and religious life, which led them to move away to inaccessible towns and hills. 
Between them and their displacement, they also accepted the African slaves who were brought to complement the forced tasks in the then New Spain.
This historical novel also tells of the life of Captain Miguel Caldera, son of a Spaniard and an indigenous woman, who receives the commission of the viceroy Don Luis Velasco to pacify the Chichimeca border of the late sixteenth century. 
Also read: Women and books: 3 recent works to accompany this #8M
‘Houses of Vedado’
With 11 stories that recall one of the emblematic neighborhoods of the bourgeoisie in Cuba, the Cuban narrator, journalist and screenwriter María Elena Llana conforms Houses of Vedado (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2022), a book that portrays the changes that Cuban society began to have before the arrival of the revolution on the island.
Llana was born in the municipality of Cienfuegos in 1936. This allowed him to witness the transformation that the island began to have in the mid-twentieth century.
Even though Houses of Vedado it had already been published in 1983, the FCE launches this new edition to revive what were at one time the wealthy houses of the Cuban bourgeoisie, with stories in which mostly women are the protagonists.
‘Thirst’
A novel typical of Judeo-Christian history is told according to Jesus Christ and recreated by the writer Amélie Nothomb, who was born in Japan but today, after residing in France, has become one of the most popular authors in the French language. 
In Thirst (Anagrama, 2022), Nothomb gives voice to Jesus, the protagonist, to narrate The Testament, that is, those events of which he himself was a participant with the miracles he performed, his crucifixion, his death and resurrection, but told in a lyrical and philosophical tone, distinctive of the author.
Throughout the story, readers will find a bit of humor, with which Nothomb reinterprets and humanizes the life of Jesus, a character who knows love, desire, faith, pain and disappointment.
‘Meeting’
At last Meeting is the debut of author Natasha Brown: the story of a black British woman who reflects on what it means to be a successful woman of African descent in England.
Brown talks about how a society that is a suckedIt continues to revive what was once colonialism, a past that is still present in today’s conversations.
Meeting it becomes a novel that raises the life of a young Afro-descendant woman, who is successful and lives integrated into the still classist English society.
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Original source in Spanish