Migrant Life in the New North American Dreamland

Brenda Peynado, The Rock Eaters: Stories

A religious order is formed around preserving teenagers from sin, and the greatest sin is falling asleep and dreaming. An aging Dominican socialite throws away her keys and spends her waning days communicating with her favorite niece through a tiny crack in the door. A toymaker is the only one left standing between a race of lace-winged extraterrestrials and the racist punks who come for them.

Brenda Peynado’s debut collection swings wildly among genres, but her short stories share one thematic question: what if the metaphors that drive our lives were real? What if the stones of sadness that tie us to a place were literal stones we could hold? What if the “thoughts and prayers” we sent up after tragedies went to an actual, listening being? What if radiation turned loyal people into superheroes?

Latin American literature gave us a nearly unique genre, Magic Realism, driven by images of the surreal or supernatural being treated as ordinary. Authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende gave us stories where the seemingly paranormal is as ordinary as rain. As Hispanic culture becomes increasingly widespread in Anglo-America, American-born Latin writers like Peynado are creating a North American equivalent to Magic Realism.

Peynado’s narrative voice is thoughtful and ruminative, without getting self-consciously “literary.” Most of her stories are told by a first-person narrator, usually female, frequently the young daughter of first-generation immigrants. This youthful, unjaded viewpoint lets us witness a world where wonder and anomaly roam the earth unhindered. Her narrators are too innocent to realize the things they witness are bizarre, or that their lives have been upended.

Several of Peynado’s stories resemble the high-minded fiction published in glossy quarterlies, but with paranormal elements as part of their background. In the title story, “The Rock Eaters,” a generation of ambitious young Dominicans learns how to fly, and uses that ability to flee to America. In “The Man I Could Be,” Peynado’s only story from a male viewpoint, a teenager’s raw potential literally lives in his house, constantly disappointed.

Two stories are out-and-out science fiction. “The Kite Maker” features a woman seeking penitence for the violence she participated in, when the first scared, dying extraterrestrials crash-landed on Earth. “The Touches” asks: what if the machines built The Matrix for benevolent reasons? This story directly, unabashedly nods to Plato, Descartes, and Robert Nozick, while also speaking directly to life in plague-infested America.

Brenda Peynado

Only a few stories don’t directly involve supernatural themes. “Yaiza” deals with a working-class tennis savant whose natural talent upends the posh hierarchy. “We Work in Miraculous Cages” addresses the plight of a young professional, trapped in jobs beneath her capability, because the economy urged her into usurious student debt when she was too young to understand the commitment. Even without magic, these stories describe how reality changes their protagonists.

Though Peynado’s approach is usually sidelong and fantastic, calling these stories “fantasy” is misleading. She doesn’t toss us headlong into another world; instead, she addresses the fears and aspirations everybody has, which we usually keep at arm’s length by discussing them in metaphors. The religious image of staying awake and watchful against sin, in “The Dreamers,” for instance. Or the ghosts living in our basements, in “True Love Game.”

I don’t always like short story collections anymore. Short stories are frequently an afterthought in today’s publishing industry, where the real money comes from novels. Yet the stories Peynado offers are well-thought-out, with remarkably detailed settings; we can imagine how the small changes she offers could have profound impacts on our world. We see one moment in her characters’ lives, usually something catastrophic, but these never feel like orphaned occasions.

The frequency with which Peynado uses children or teenagers as narrators might reflect something in herself. Maybe. Her characters are fumbling with important questions. They haven’t learned to rely on shopworn platitudes like adults do (platitudes made painfully literal in “Thoughts and Prayers”), but they also lack experience necessary to address their problems directly. Again, this is a debut collection; like her narrators, Peynado is still finding her way.

Not that these stories lack sophistication. These aren’t apprentice-level finger exercises; Peynado already has a distinct voice, and an approach that stands out in today’s crowded publishing field. Even in pieces lasting less than ten pages, where the narrator might not tell us her name, it’s still easy to care about what she’s created. I look forward to seeing what she’s able to accomplish as she continues refining her craft.