Longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025 after its debut in 2024, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda yokes its readers to a visceral whirlwind of punk feminist short stories depicting the violence that contemporary Mexican women face. Translated by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches, the book follows the linked stories of thirteen Mexican women, unapologetically navigating tangled gender expectations, sexual violence, and exploitation under the oppressive weight of misogyny.
“Women always speak, think, and act from the memory of our pain.”
The stories range from harrowing experiences of abortion, domestic violence, sextortion, femicide, to transphobia and the occult.
De la Cerda sinks her teeth into women’s experiences; the stories range from harrowing experiences of abortion, domestic violence, sextortion, femicide, to transphobia and the occult. It is important to note that this is a high impact read that may be disturbing to some readers. Her writing is viscerally potent, telling the brutal truth without pretense, leaning on first person narration to bring forth personality and personhood.
This series of vignettes of women whose lives were cut short — including young girls — is told in a way that feels like a conversation with a friend, steeped in the vernacular of Mexican culture. With a punk, gothic overtone, the occasional tough girl comedy and dark humor shines through like a beacon of hope, fortitude, and defiance.
“Being a woman means living in a state of emergency […] There is no room of one’s own when men think our bodies belong to them.”
Opening with a story titled “Parsley and Coca-Cola” about a woman who experiences an at-home abortion alone and afraid, de la Cerda immediately invites the reader into women’s perspective, the ways in which they struggle, persevere, and find strength. Exploring sisterhood, the stories begin to depict female friendship taking place against the background of the drug trade and its murderous violence to sisters killing in self-defense. A politician’s wife buries her party girl phase only to have it dug up by a male journalist in a sextortion scandal, showcasing the way women are under a double bind. The vignettes veer into women reclaiming their agency, with a girl who steps up to provide for her fatherless family in poverty by stealing and another who trains as a cutthroat sicaria for a cartel, becoming a hitwoman to support her family.
“It drove me crazy to peep my little brothers whimpering with hunger. It fucking killed me. You probably think this story sounds like something out of La Rosa De Guadalupe cause nothing like this happens where you live, with your green spaces and well-paved streets, but this shit happens every day, whether you moneybags believe it or not.”
As de la Cerda’s scenes become increasingly violent and heartbreaking throughout the novel, elements of magical realism are introduced, increasing the emotional weight on the audience. A religious woman is married off to a much older man who kills himself with drink, leading her to feel such intense religious guilt as to warrant a deadly sacrifice. A woman is taken advantage of by a bus driver, whisked into the desert, and murdered by a group of men only to return as a vampire and exact her revenge. A transwoman experiences a similar fate. A witch puts a hex on an antagonizing neighbor, only to find she is also a witch, or “bruja”, and calls a truce.
The final story follows two friends who get separated on a night out, ending in a disappearance turned nightmare. When the surviving friend finds her companion’s life has been taken, she vows to advocate for women who are the victims of femicide, embodying a traditional Mexican folklore story of La Huesera.
A woman is taken advantage of by a bus driver, whisked into the desert, and murdered by a group of men only to return as a vampire and exact her revenge.
“La Huesera lives somewhere in your soul […] her job is to collect the bones of wolves. She finds them and saves them. Once she has a full skeleton, she lights a fire and assembles the wolf’s body. Then she sings. She sings and sings. And then — what sorcery is this? — flesh and fur cover the bones, and the wolf is off and running down the street. But wait, that’s not even the craziest part. The craziest part is that as the wolf runs, howling at the moon, it transforms into a woman. A woman who springs away laughing. After she told me this story, she said: ‘Maybe that’s your mission. To gather the bones of dead women, to piece them together and tell their stories, and then let them run free.’”
The magical realism evoked at the end of de la Cerda’s stories creates an opening for the possibility of justice. At times, though, the narrative voice or tone doesn’t change enough for each character depiction which can take away from the credibility of the women’s perspective or pull the audience out of the story, invoking the author’s voice instead.
For those who enjoy books with dark humor or subversive stories like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut or Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, Reservoir Bitches is one to consider adding to your shelf. It is also a notably quick and engrossing read at only 160 pages.
