V. Castro's Queen of the Cicaidas/La Reina de las Chicharras

 I love finding out how other languages express animal sounds. Like the way in Arabic dogs say "Haw Haw" or Japanese cats say "Nyah" or pigs go "Grunz" in German. And then there are just foreign words for animals that are fun to say, and are often also versions of what sounds they make, like "Mao" for cat in Mandarin Chinese. And then there are words for insects, like the Icelandic "kakkalakki" for cockroach.

I have a new favorite one of these, and it is Chicharra, Spanish for cicaida. And, as it is frequently chanted in V. Castro's fantastically pulpy new horror novel, Queen of the Cicaidas/La Reina de las Chicharras, "Chicharrachicharracharracharra".

When I stumbled across this little gem of in the new books section of my local public library, I thought at first this might be a bilingual edition, since the title shows up on the cover in both English and Spanish, but alas, I was wrong. I was wrong about a couple of things with regards to this novel, but, you know, not alas. Because it's good.

The story starts out in the present day, when our heroine, Belinda, has to return to her old hometown of Alice, TX for a friend's wedding. Belinda has some kind of feelings about this, being herself divorced and becoming somewhat estranged from the teenaged son she's raising by herself, but she does her best to try to enjoy it... and then she discovers that the awesome wedding venue her friend has chosen is... a haunted farm!

But it's not just any old haunted farm. It's a farm where a brutal hate crime took place in the 1950s, against a lovely young undocumented farm hand named Milagros. But instead of a mere ghost of Milagros stalking the grounds and house, this farm is under the special attention of no less a figure than the Aztec goddess of the dead, Mictecacihuatl, and if you're getting Silvia Moreno-Garcia vibes, you're not alone. But V. Castro has other tricks up her sleeve than sending Belinda on a road trip with a scary skull-faced lady with a fancy headdress -- like turning Milagros into a brand new kind of monster*. The molted shells of immature cicaidas figured prominently in the torture-murder of Milagros, and so she is reborn into the undead Queen of the Cicaidas, whose legend immediately starts to grow and partakes a bit of, say, Bloody Mary but has other sights to show you as the story progresses.

This could easily have been a story of a plucky modern lady helping a nice hotel owner to purge his property of its supernatural miasma or something like that, which we've already read many times before, and it was kind of what I was expecting from the jacket copy. There are elements of this hoary old plot, sure, but there is much more, and I'm not just talking about how Belinda gets back in touch with her Mexican-American roots and especially with her Mexican side when she investigates Milagros' story and travels to the unfortunate migrant's original home to tell her family why her letters and money stopped coming so long ago. This is touching enough to make Queen of the Cicaidas stand out, but even this wasn't enough for V. Castro, who is maybe, like me, a bit of a fan of stuff like Ernest Hogan's magnificent High Aztech or something similar. I was absolutely deslighted by the unexpected turn this story took about 3/4 of the way through, when stuff happens that I'm afraid you'll have to read the novel to discover for yourself. Again, it's not a long read, but it's fun, though, prude alert: there's some graphic sex scenes near the end that I could have done without, but hey, Belinda is a lady with needs, I get it.

Speaking of, ahem, those kind of needs, I have to give this book kudos for excellent queer representation; Milagros had a girlfriend back in the day, so the farm owner's advances on her pretty person were extra unwelcome, and the modern day owner of the farm is a gay man with his poop in a group who is ready to start a family with the right partner. And no, it's not Belinda.

So, it's coming up on Halloween, you need a bit of spooky in your life that also takes on a couple of important social issues, and dishes up some godpunk and invented a whole new supernatural monster? Bow down to La Reina!

*Really, this monster/figure felt so organic to the setting that I went digging to see where she might have originated. As far as I can tell, she originated in the mind of one V. Castro, though I dunno, maybe it was inspired by the Navajo trickster god I learned about decades ago from James Hillman - variously spelled Bekotsidi or Begodchiddy, who sometimes turned into an insect in order to escape pursuit, other times, upon capture, let various insects swarm from his mouth and hair and whatnot. And dressed as a woman a lot. Great inspiration if that's where she got it, but if no, well, bravo to her for coming up with a genuinely new figure of pseudo-folklore. Who is cool AF, btw.

Also, apropos of nothing, here's maybe the person to cast if this ever gets adapted into a film. Her name is Shokotan, and for several years she made a sort of fashion statement using their discarded exoskeletons in celebration of cicada molting season in Japan. My kind of girl.