Telepunga

Arelis Uribe was the first to inscribe on the map of Chile's traditionally upper-class and male-dominated literature the urban, working-class, and decidedly non-white millennials of her country: the "quillras" (mixed-race women) who gave their name to her celebrated book of short stories. Telepunga is the sequel to that dance of the leftovers, brought to a present marked by the return of conservative forces and an order that never truly disappeared. Under the influence of a dissident and fierce prose —a self-confessed niece of Pedro Lemebel and cousin of Daniela Catrileo— Uribe traces the skyline of the working-class neighborhood against the stark and gleaming backdrop of the most neoliberal Santiago. And she counterattacks with a raw, gritty style and bursts of class consciousness. In these new stories —as broken as they are intensely human— we encounter a rural Pinochet-era school, a gang of bullying students, a girl recounting her working-class mother's struggle to survive, a journalist aroused by a young man with Down syndrome, and a Chilean woman who speaks with an Argentinian accent. Surprising, rooted in identity, colloquial, imagined from the margins of the world for the margins of the world, Telepunga unfolds with a direct and stark style, tinged with a painful tenderness. At its heart are the young "telepunga" workers: junk food pizza delivery boys silently plotting their revenge like someone preparing a dazzling party. And we are right there with them.