Lotería: Stories by Cynthia Pelayo
Many thanks to Union Square & Co. and NetGalley for the
advanced copy of Cynthia Pelayo’s exciting and creepy collection of stories Lotería,
featuring 54 stories all based on the Mexican game of chance. After reading a
review about this book some time ago, I’ve been wanting to read it, and was
very excited to find a digital copy available for preview. I also loved reading
these stories, many of which are based on folklore, myths, and superstitions from
different cultures and people of Latin American countries. I initially just
assumed that it would be based on Mexican American culture, but I was really
excited to find stories that took place in Puerto Rico, Peru, Columbia, Argentina,
and Spain, among other countries. Furthermore, it was cool to encounter
retellings or reimagined stories that featured familiar myths and folklore from
Latin American culture like the Chupacabra and La Llorona. Pelayo’s inventive
short stories present characters who find themselves in strange and sometimes
unfortunate situations where they encounter these mythological figures in more
modern settings. I enjoyed Pelayo’s ability to also incorporate modern
situations and issues in some of the stories (“La Sirena” for example, a brief
and terrifying story about human trafficking).
Each story is based on one of the Lotería cards and features
an image from the card. Although the connections are often clear, some are not
as clear initially, yet reading through the story and especially the final
chapter helps to better understand the connection between the story and the
image. My personal favorites in this collection were the stories that dealt
with folklore and mythological figures. I was looking up some of the instances
of Aztec language (Nahuatl) and culture, as the book has many references. There’s
also a story about the pirates of Puerto Rico where the narrator has a
spiritual encounter in El Moro, which I visited a little more than a year ago.
I’ve been to that fort three times and was able to take my kids to visit this
last time. It’s a fascinating place, and Pelayo’s story added another
interesting way to interpret not only the history, but also the people who
populated El Moro and Viejo San Juan. There were also some uncanny and eerie
type stories featuring dolls, possessed children, and demons that randomly show
up with strange messages. Additionally, a story about a bookseller who loses a
cursed tome to a thief has a kind of karmic tone found in famous stories like “The
Monkey’s Paw” and episodes of The Twilight Zone. Although not all the
pieces are of the same quality, there are enough weird, creepy, and terrifying stories
that kept me reading throughout the night. The collection reminded me a lot of
King’s Night Shift, where characters often meet horror in unexpected and
surprising places, and others are sometimes confronted with loss, pain, and sadness,
sometimes as a result of their own actions. This is a great collection of
stories, and I was so impressed with Pelayo’s ability to use the Lotería
cards to craft these unique, creepy, and often terrifying stories. Even
individual stories would work in an anthology or teaching literary and
narrative devices in a thematic unit. I could see some of these stories as the
kind that would capture the attention of reluctant readers and hidden horror
fans. I highly recommend this collection, whether reading individual stories or
checking out the entire collection. I’m also looking forward to reading more of
Pelayo’s books.
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