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Carlos González makes a brilliant contribution to humanistic studies of Latin America by soliciting and collecting the inspired essays in ""Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature and Media."" To confront current challenges to understanding our natural and political environment, the register of the monstrous as more strange than horrifying will capture readers' attention and stimulate urgent reflections about ways to interpret and to coexist with the planet and with one another. Dr. Doris Sommer Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures African and African American Studies Harvard University Uneven, disproportionate, abnormal: monsters are all that resist clear definitions and depictions. And yet, we cannot help but stare at them, albeit fearful that they might stare back at us. This volume is a rebel gaze at the eyes of those monsters, in a quest to understand their role in contemporary Latin American fiction. Reader, beware! Caio Esteves de Souza Harvard University This book is an immersion into the nooks and crannies of contemporary Latin American cultural products, allowing the reader to transit in a variety of ways where old figures of terror have been reinvented, and others have emerged: from the vampire as a pestilential entity to the carnal revenants who evoke the disappeared. At the same time, ""Casas Tomadas"" installs a new canon based on the predominance of women artists, who disrupt government/patriarchal structures to reveal alternative forms of understanding monstrosity and shed light on a perpetual violence. In this sense, all the contributors address the grip of the unreal to show that horror houses reality in its most abject and pure sense. Helen Flor Garnica Brocos Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

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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.

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