What the Forest Devours by Elaine Vilar Madruga, translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn, is the kind of horror novel that makes me very aware of the cultural assumptions I bring to what I’m reading. The story takes place in a Cuban rainforest where the forest itself functions as a ravenous god, demanding sacrifice from a community that has learned to survive by feeding their children to the forest. Mothers raise their children knowing what ultimately awaits them, women are expected to reproduce as a condition of survival, and the boundaries between motherhood, violence, devotion, and self-preservation become increasingly difficult to separate. It is a brutal premise, and Madruga does not soften it for the reader.
One thing I’ve noticed while reading more horror from Central and South America, and now Cuba, is how readily some of these authors approach subjects that U.S. American writers sometimes seem reluctant to name directly. There is a bluntness to the language surrounding violence, bodily realities, motherhood, and cruelty that I appreciate. Where a U.S. American novel might reach for euphemism or carefully circle an atrocity, Madruga is willing to call the thing what it is. There is something refreshing about that refusal to make horrific realities more comfortable for the reader. Atrocities exist in the real world. People do terrible things to one another. Children are abused and sacrificed. Women are exploited. Mothers can be both victims and perpetrators. Pretending otherwise does not make those realities less horrific, and I would rather a horror novel confront them head-on.
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