Veracruz Tropical Lowlands Rereadings in the Narrative of Fernanda Melchor

Abstract

This article analyses how Mexican writer and journalist Fernanda Melchor proposes innovative readings of the tropic of Veracruz in her novels Falsa liebre (2013), Temporada de huracanes (2017), and Páradais (2021). Through young and violent characters who have been themselves object of abuse, impotent in front of a social reality of insecurity and drug trafficking, Melchor shows what she calls the “black tropic”. The tropic as described by Melchor gets rid of romantic stereotyped images and stresses the sense of loss of the characters, caused by their lack of a life project and their impossibility to feel a place like their own. In the case of Fernanda Melchor, the rereadings of the tropic always imply a social and spatial dimension.