Overview

A fierce, tender collection of stories about the lives, traumas, and dreams of Mapuche youth in modern-day Chile.Jesús, Valeska, Yajaira, and Ale are some of the vivid characters that inhabit the stories told in Piñen , a book that casts an unflinching gaze on the stark margins of urban life. Within its pages unfold the bullet-ridden death of a big shot from the blocks; the fraught, often violated sexuality of women in a displaced community; the unwavering bond between two friends navigating the waria ; the toxicity that seeps through youth and the distances that inevitably come with growing up; and, finally, a fierce declaration of love to the clandestine spirit of a brother. These are young lives that drift through the many peripheries of the city carrying a hope as immense as the injustice that defines their days.The stories that make up Piñen invite the reader into an intimate, often overlooked space – those small, enclosed rooms where the everyday tragedies of the many silently unfold. With brutal realism and lyrical restraint, Daniela Catrileo renders these acts of courage and violence with masterful precision, granting voice and presence to those rarely seen in literature.

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9781917260381

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Reviews

""Catrileo sketches out a poetic and political map... of Andean territory."" —La Nación ""A beautiful, merciless book that offers a glimpse into the old wound of belonging and exclusion, approached with a rarely explored rawness."" —Alia Trabucco Zerán , author of THE REMAINDER ""Piñen is a profound and harsh book, a narrative that at times strikes like a whip, yet threaded with moments of strange and haunting beauty."" —Selva Almada , author of NOT A RIVER ""‘Piñen’ refers to the grime that forms on skin when sweat mixes with the dust of the earth. In Chile, this Mapuche word also carries connotations of poverty. Through this lens, Daniela Catrileo offers a powerful perspective—linking two enduring sites of violence and disgrace in the country: marginalization as a geopolitical strategy of control, and the postcolonial repression still enacted by the state."" —El Desconcierto ""A gripping tale of the heirs of the Mapuche diaspora. Catrileo is a dazzling new voice."" —Bestia Lectora ""Memory, identity, and diaspora are at the heart of this author’s work—a sharp critique of her country’s reality."" —Coolt

Author Information

Daniela Catrileo is an award-winning Mapuche writer from Santiago de Chile. Her debut novel Chilco received a PEN Translates Award and was prize-winning in Chile. Piñen is her first collection of short stories to be published in English. Jacob Edelstein is a translator from the South Bay of Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Latin American Literature Today , The Southern Review and The Columbia Review . His translation of Patrimonio by Santiago Arau was published in 2023.

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