Cyn Vargas 'On The Way' / Rey Andújar 'Saturnalia'

So.

First off.

There's not really too much of a reason to lump these two books together. Other than the fact that they are both collections of short stories written by authors living in Chicago, put out by Chicago presses, and I finished reading both on the same day. And the settings for both alternate between various locations in Latin America and the United States. Other than that, there's not much of a connection, and I'm writing about them together solely based on my timing of reading them. Let's start with On The Way.

I picked this book up at City Lit about a month ago. I'm always game to try anything Curbside Splendor puts out, even if the epigraph is a Radiohead lyric. But a blurb on the back from Bonnie Jo Campbell meant I would pick it up anyway.

Let's start with this: these stories are not uplifting. They're not always tragic, but they are often heartbreaking. It's not the fact that death always awaits us (it does sometimes), but that more often, bad things happen and the devastation permeates itself in its wake throughout a life; lucky are we who don't have to identify with many of these stories. The protagonists are generally women. They've been abused, they've been cheated on, they've been divorced, they've been abandoned in physical and existential ways. Vargas writes about women young and old, who've experienced a lot and who've experienced a lot of pain. Rarely do they find redemption. In an interview with Kati Heng, Vargas revealed her personal connection with some of these characters, how she identifies with them, and why they need their voices to be heard: "To appreciate the joy, you have to have the pain too. I think I am able to write bittersweet stories because I have lived through it."

Overall, On The Way is a bit of a different speed than what I normally read, but I certainly found myself attracted to these tails of despair. One of the things I've come to appreciate most in literature is the intersection of two (or more) cultures. Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Diaz, Aleksandar Hemon, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. all do this extremely well. Vargas too follows in this vein, in varying degrees, and I'm excited to read more of her work.

Further, Rey Andújar's short story collection Saturnalia perfectly encapsulates what bi-culturalism means. Originally published in Santo Domingo in 2011, it was translated in 2013 and put out on Siete Vientos, in both Spanish and English. Similarly to Vargas, these stories are the opposite of uplifting. Andújar writes grittier than Vargas, finding the seediest elements of urban culture. Sex, drugs, and rock&roll are front and center for Andújar, who's characters also blur gender roles, in a reference to the collection's title.

Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival, with sacrifices and banquets for the deity Saturn. The festival celebrated role reversal (often master-slave reversal), feasting, gambling, and other suspensions of social norms. Music, hedonism, and technology play a major role in Andújar's stories. Provocative is the least descriptive way to define his work. Rooted in realism, the characters in these stories don't know how to say 'no.' If they did, they wouldn't find themselves getting kicked out of night clubs, meeting with 'the other woman,' committing various crimes, or be in a constant state of hangover. Some of these stories are only two pages long, such as my favorite, "Reflex," an experimental piece that in one long paragraph manages to distort the relationship of identity and the passage of time.

While Vargas takes a conventional approach to tell the stories of the under-voiced, Andújar experiments with form to tell gritty urban tales from New York City to Latin America. While there isn't a whole lot connecting the two writers, they both manage to create compelling reads. Vargas pays more attention to craft and creating realistic characters, ones that you Sisiphystically root for even though you know they won't win, while Andújar's sadism and experimentation makes for a difficult, harrowing, and ultimately, unstoppable reading experience.