Animal print

There's a teenager dressed as a leopard seeking tenderness at a party while waging war against her own desires. There are gazelles devouring lions. There are girls hiding violence beneath their patterned skin. There are bodies that mutate, camouflage themselves, learn to bare their teeth. In these stories, victims become executioners, and executioners demand love. The jungle isn't outside; it throbs beneath clothing, makeup, and language, and each story opens a crack in the everyday. It forces us to confront what we would prefer to tame: desire, identity, wounds, motherhood, cruelty. Animal Print is a book of contemporary fables where the wild and the human exchange masks. Cuevas writes like someone caressing with one hand and scratching with the other, with prose that is both fierce and delicate, lyrical and sharp, transforming each story into a distorting mirror where beneath each skin another animal awaits its moment to reveal itself. Because we all have a beast inside. And even the most brutal one keeps searching for love.