Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
Ringing true to its title, Hurricane Season does not fail to sweep its readers away. With ferocious language and fierce authenticity, Melchor draws readers into the static yet intense life within one small Mexican village. The violence in this book is stifling. By no means is it an easy or light-hearted read. But Melchor delivers a story rich in the results of systemic poverty and the destructive nature of machismo; those results both ultimately being violent.
The mysterious murder of the village Witch gutted the truth of La Matosa; barring an opening to the darkness of the village. The Witch is claimed to make everyone in the village uncomfortable. Despite this, she is a necessary pillar of their community. Every Friday the women in the town visit her for help (through curses and potions) and the men cycle through her decrepit house exchanging sex for money or drugs. The Witch magnifies the relationship both men and women have with masculinity; they both are desperately looking for a remedy.
The virus of oppressive masculinity runs deep in this novel. No character is left untouched by the harmful effects of male conquest. The Witch’s murderers are young men but even they are not exempt from the pressure and stress machismo puts on the male image. They seek to prop themselves up through sexual dominance (against both men and women), violent behavior, and outward emotional neglect. Moreover, Melchor shows us how deeply internalized machismo can be. Chapter 5 centers around Norma, a thirteen-year-old girl impregnated after repeatedly being rapped by her stepfather. She fled her family with the ultimate goal of suicide meant to take place at the last location she ever spent with her mother, a time before she knew the violence men are capable of. She was only ever able to see herself as the cause of her sexual abuse. This blame is built through family dynamics that chastise pleasure and sexuality. It is built through a patriarchy that upholds male pleasure as supreme. This supreme idea of male pleasure is strictly heterosexual and thus the language of Hurricane Season reeks of homophobia and transphobia. Brando, the focus of Chapter 6, highlights the violence one will commit against others when one fears their own desires. In an attempt to persevere his masculinity as a source of power against the backdrop of poverty and corruption, Brando displayed a ferocity that extends as far as murder.
The plot of Hurricane Season is haunted by the incessant appearance of drugs, alcohol, and sex. Every character within this book is desperate to escape reality and become anyone other than themselves. They are trapped by La Matosa and that despair manifests through drugs and alcohol. The incessant poverty the village experiences render all of its citizens in search of any feeling. Brando revealed to us that his ultimate motivation for the Witch’s murder was escape. He wanted to escape the doomed village that ruled his life. This escape does not just refer to the village as a spatiotemporal location but as a larger metaphor for systemic poverty and corruption. Brando wanted to leave behind the version of himself that he had to be in La Matoda to survive.
Hurricane Season is covered in gore and discomfort. It forces its readers to writhe as they bare the carnage poverty and machismo can breed. Melchor provides a commemoration of pain as Hurricane Season captures the brutal perspectives of what it means to be a victim, an accomplice, a killer, and an observer.