Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature and Media

'Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature and Media' examines how Latin American writers, filmmakers, and artists use monstrosity to reflect on marginalization, identity, and social trauma. This volume brings together close analyses of literature, film, and visual art from across Latin America, exploring how the monstrous symbolizes resistance to cultural, political, and historical oppression.
Organized into four sections—Night Lights, In the Grip of Monsters, Echoes in the Darkness, and Sinister Spaces—the book offers case studies on works by Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schweblin, Issa López, and others. Each chapter reveals how monsters, from mythic figures to supernatural landscapes, serve as potent metaphors for issues like queer and feminist activism, postcolonial haunting, and socio-political violence. Contributors engage with genres from horror and the Gothic to speculative fiction, situating monstrosity within Latin American experiences of violence, trauma, and resilience. Distinct for its interdisciplinary approach, 'Casas Tomadas' will serve as a key resource for students and researchers in Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Gothic and Horror Studies. Its focused structure makes it ideal for classroom adoption, while its fresh perspectives on Latin American Gothic and the politics of monstrosity offer new insights for scholars in queer and postcolonial theory.

Introduction: Monsters and the Margins

Part One: Night Lights
Chapter 1 Mermaids, Werewolves, ‘Humanimals’ and Unnamable Monsters: A Review of Monsters in Contemporary Literature of the Latin American Southern Cone
Jorge Antonio Sánchez Rivera
Boston University
Chapter 2 Monsters, Mirrors of Ourselves: Liminalities of Knowledge in Contemporary Adaptations of Brazilian Mythology
Olivia Holloway
USMA West Point

Part Two: In the Grip of Monsters
Chapter 3 Reformulaciones de la Monstruosidad: Las Malas Como “Contra-Activismo”
Lina Angulo Amaya
Georgetown University
Chapter 4 El Vampirismo en Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego de Mariana Enríquez
Lisa Viviani
Western University
Chapter 5 Disturbing the Real: Reclaiming the Monstrous in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema
Fabio Andrade
Vassar College

Part Three: Echoes in the Darkness
Chapter 6 The Revenant and Reality: Postmortem Politics and Horror Vérité in Issa López’s Vuelven (2017)
Andrea Garza Erdmann
Harvard University
Chapter 7 “They’d talk in circles”: Discursive and (In)visible Monsters in Mariana Enríquez’ The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Andrea Tinnemeyer
Independent scholar
Chapter 8 Comala, Capitaloceno, y Comunidad: Los Monstruos de Pedro Páramo
Elisabetta Rodio
Cornell University

Part Four: Sinister Spaces
Chapter 9 Misfits and Mouthfuls: Samanta Schweblin’s Uncanny Embodiments
Carlos A. González
Harvard University
Chapter 10 Home as a Death Trap: Narrating Monstrosity of the House in Guadalupe Dueñas’ “Historia de Mariquita”
Velebita Koričančić
Anahuac Mexico University / National Autonomous
University of Mexico
Chapter 11 Monsters at Home: Post-Soviet Subversions of the Caribbean Gothic in Cuban Women’s Literature and Art
Elzbieta Sklodowska
Washington University

List of Contributors
Index

Carlos A. González is a PhD candidate in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at Harvard University, specializing in horror, the Weird, and speculative fiction in Spanish and French literature. With a focus on Latin American and Francophone Weird narratives, González’s research examines how monstrosity, marginality, and ethics converge to challenge the reader. They have published and presented on topics including Latin American women’s neo-Gothic literature, heterotopic French fiction, and Queer and Crip criticism within both contemporary and medieval monster narratives in literature and film. González’s dissertation-in-progress investigates the figure of the monster across historical periods in Weird literature, arguing that literary monstrosity offers insights into interpersonal relationships through the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Their work draws on interdisciplinary training in critical theory and comparative literature to highlight how Gothic and Weird genres uniquely challenge ethical and social norms. González lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with their partner, shih tzu, and the creature living under their bed.

monstrous bodies, liminality, Latin American Gothic, resistance narratives, speculative realism, feminist horror, mythological subversion, cultural trauma, peripheral identities, uncanny spaces, narrative embodiment, alternative modernities, transgressive aesthetics, memory and haunting, socio-political critique