The (Tropi)Weird

Over the course of the last few years, I’ve wandered from the more typical genre stuff to develop a series of stories that began with my short story, How Juan Bobo Got to los Nueba Yores and has continued. Stories often set in Puerto Rico, and utilizing elements of the Weird to grapple with the archipelago’s colonial struggle. As grim as that may sound, I playfully started calling it TropiWeird.

At a surface level, I came up with “TropiWeird” as a quippy way to describe several of my stories. However, I slowly recognized there was more to it and not just something I said to amuse myself. It pokes fun at how often Weird Fiction depends on misty and temperate climes for their disquietudes, shaped and informed by authors living in those areas. It’s as if the Weird couldn’t adapt to take root in humid, sun-drenched locales, or hidden deep within the jungle. Considering it further, I warmed to the idea that it represented what Professor Joy Sanchez-Taylor calls “double-estrangement” in Dispelling Fantasies: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre. In my case, becoming part of the Puerto Rican diaspora I’ve been given distance to recognize how often colonialism is present. Not hidden, not invisible, but simply not remarked upon because what can anyone do about it? Imagine growing up in the oldest colony in the Western Hemisphere and this is your favorite soda:

Have I mentioned that when forced to navigate the everyday absurdities Puerto Ricans claim they live in Macondo?

I graduated from a Department of Defense school on Fort Buchanan, an Army base that’s a mere 5 miles away from the ruins of Caparra - Ponce de Leon’s colonial stronghold. Was there any symbolism in where the U.S. Army decided to break ground? I’m unsure but it certainly invites one to believe they knew, and wanted to tap into that energy.

Looking back, I can’t help feeling a stark ambivalence, a dizzying sense of double-vision. Puerto Rico as home, but also a place full of resonances and strange echoes.

Of course, TropiWeird isn’t unique to Puerto Rico - after all, the tropics extend across the globe, often part of the Global South. Often post-colonial, but not always. Likely to be home to similar ambiguities.

Feel free to do with TropiWeird what you will - not that anyone needs my permission for that. But if you want, pick your way up the jungle path until you reach a mountain pool full of freshwater shrimp.

Come on in, the water’s strange.

One More Thing…

Part of what got me thinking about TropiWeird was my short story, “Blanquitos” (due out in Issue #8 of Typebar Magazine). Starting as a reminiscence on childhood friends and odd rumors, half-remembered, the story riffs on Machen’s The White People. I’ll write more about it once it's out, but until then…

That's all she wrote!