15 Latinas

From the award-winning author of Creep, an anarchic history of Latin America told through the biographies of Latinas over time.

After eating some quesadillas and settling into bed to read a book about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Myriam Gurba is visited by three glowing piñatas who announce that she is to write a new history of Latin America. From there, Gurba embarks on her ghost-given mission, traveling on the page to Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Mexico, and beyond, focusing each chapter on historical figures who shaped the reality and perception of Latinidad into what it is today—whether through revolution, community, terror, or magic.

In 15 Latinas, Gurba explores everything from Zora Neale Hurston's Voudou practices to a love doctor's persecution by the Spanish Inquisition, shedding light on John Wayne's fetishization and abuse of his three Latina wives and the sly reclamation of Cardi B's "underdog" feminism. Through a radical collage of figures as diverse as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the disgraced Representative George Santos, Gurba calls back to the fire of the Haitian Revolution, the role witchcraft had to play in it, and the complicated women who carry its flame forward to a more liberated world. A blistering and brilliantly provocative new offering from “the most fearless writer in America.” (Luis Alberto Urrea), 15 Latinas dares to confront the “nightmare” of Latin America—and what might be possible in its wake.