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I saw a post on Threads earlier this year that said every bookish girlie has gone through either a Greek mythology, Tudor dynasty, or Egyptology era in their youth. Not to brag, but I went three for three, baby! Then I made those phases a lifetime commitment. Between podcasts, documentaries, and books, I generally have plenty of options to satisfy these obsessions. Greek mythology in particular has been having a moment in books for several years now, so much so that there are more releases coming out each year than I can keep up with.
But there’s one author and mythology expert I will always make time to read, no matter what else I have going on. In this 2022 release, she wrote my personal catnip: a novel that takes the famous narrative of a maligned woman and asks, “What if that’s not the whole story?”
All Access members, read on to find out which mythical figure gets a feminist retelling here!
The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.
This week, we’re highlighting a post that had our Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz feeling a type of way. Now, even five years after it was published, Vanessa is still salty about American Dirt. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
Picture it: The United States, January 2020. A book with a pretty blue and white cover is making the rounds on the bookish internet. The blue ink forms a beautiful hummingbird motif against a creamy background, a bird associated with the sun god Huitzilopochtli in Aztec mythology. Black barbed wire, at once delicate and menacing, cuts the pattern into a grid resembling an arrangement of Talavera tiles. The package is eye-catching, ostensibly Mexican in feel, and evocative of borders and the migrant experience.
The book tells the story of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who is forced to flee her home when a drug cartel murders everyone in her family except for her young son at a quinceañera. She and the boy are forced to become migrants and embark on a treacherous journey north to the U.S. border, evading the cartel and befriending fellow migrants along the way. The book is being lauded not just as the “it” book of the season but as the immigration story. It gets the Oprah treatment and is praised by everyone from Salma Hayek to the great Sandra Cisneros, who called it “the great novel of Las Américas.”