Cristina Pacheco

Mar de historias is an anthology of some of the best stories Cristina Pacheco published over more than thirty years in La Jornada.

Dramatic, moving, and not without a sense of humor. Life is an avalanche of anecdotes, and the everyday is the stage for the extraordinary. A grandmother kidnapped by her granddaughter, a wife who keeps a diary to speak to her absent husband, a disabled gardener who doesn’t know how he will enter paradise without a leg, a man accused of infidelity because of an earthquake, a child who sees foam from waves in the saltpeter, or elderly women who hire an exotic dancer.

There are many stories that make up the sea of people we cross paths with daily, and none deserves to be lost to oblivion. Intimate, nostalgic, overwhelming, wrapped in agile prose that also dissects the psyche of its protagonists, in Mar de historias—the anthology of some of the best stories Cristina Pacheco published over more than thirty years in La Jornada—the chronicle converses with the short story through a beloved gallery of characters from authentic Mexico, the one that surprises and outrages us every day.