Debut Review: THE ROCK EATERS by Brenda Peynado

THE ROCK EATERS by debut Brenda Peynado is a luminous collection of 16 award-winning short stories filled with speculative elements that are rich with allegory.

“Thoughts and Prayers” begins the morning of another school shooting in a Florida suburb. Each house has a resident guardian angel, or really just a creature with a humanoid face, black bovine eyes, and bird body that squats on the roof beside the chimney. They chew grass and produce guano while thoughts and prayers are offered up to them every morning at dawn. A young girl, who lost her sister in the latest tragedy, remarks: “Nobody’s doing anything.”

“The Kite Maker,” explores themes of social justice through the lens of science fiction. An alien race, nicknamed Dragonflies for their wings, have crash landed on our planet. They are massacred and then assimilated into work camps for cheap labor. An antique toymaker remembers killing Dragonflies after their arks fell from the sky and cracked open like eggs. Memories of violence haunt her as the Dragonflies frequent her shop for her handmade kites. They fly them in the park across the street and yip with sheer joy. Dragonflies can’t fly in Earth’s heavy atmosphere, they can only send up their kites and remember the feeling of weightlessness and belonging on their home planet. When a band of skinheads vandalize shops that cater to aliens, the kite maker hides a Dragonfly in her workshop. She even recognizes one of the newly shaven skinheads: “Did it matter that before the Dragonflies arrived, she and I would have been hated instead—for our dark hair, her Chicana roots and my Dominican ones…”

“The Rock Eaters” features the dreamy, magical realism often found in Latin-American literature. First-generation Americans take to the sky and fly back to the island country of their birth like a large flock of migratory birds. They carry their young children over the ocean to meet their grandparents and see the old country. As the children age, their bodies are able to levitate and fly like their parents, but they don’t want to abandon the island and its people—their people, their heritage. Instead of preparing to return to the distant land of opportunity, they tether their ankles to the ground and eat bellyfuls of red rocks to weigh down their maturing bodies.

These are just a sampling of the stories from a remarkable new talent.