A Letter from the Editor, by Ofelia Montelongo

When I first think of monsters, I remember my dark childhood bedroom at night. The monsters were all around me, ready to haunt me. As I grew older, those monsters dissipated into my mind. They became part of my routine and how my body feels. Some people call it anxiety, I call it my day a day.

When I was invited to edit an issue at Barrelhouse, I immediately thought of monsters. Creatures, monsters, and folklore storytelling have always been present in Latin America, dating back to pre-Hispanic times. Wailing sounds usually fill our earliest memories if we are born and raised in Latin America, and luckily, the storytelling tradition is not lost outside of our countries through migration. We can find that in the United States diaspora, ghosts and monsters are alive in literature. Young Adult (YA) Latin American authors in the United States have gathered in the anthology Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Monster Stories (2022), edited by Yamile Saied Méndez and Amparo Ortiz, to tell their own versions of Latin American mythology, exploring themes of oppression, grief, sisterhood, identity, first love, and empowerment. In Latin America, authors like Maria Fernanda Ampuero, Monica Ojeda, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, and Brenda Lozano, among others, are using monster tropes in their stories to denounce patriarchy and deconstruct the idea of the Other.

In this issue, we have all types of monsters among different themes: physical monsters, La Llorona, the border, abusers, cancer, society, fairies, and, of course, our internal monsters. Sometimes, those monsters are disguised as something else; sometimes, they are so evident. In this issue, you will find translations and renowned authors such as Ecuadorian writer María Fernanda Ampuero and Mexican Gerardo Sámano Córdova, alongside writers who are publishing for the first time. All of these Latine monsters texts have wowed us in different ways, and we hope you enjoy reading them, too,

Con cariño,

Ofe