jawbone, monica ojéda / the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson

Mandíbula (2018), Mónica Ojeda

Me enteré de este libro por TikTok o BookTook o como prefieran decirle. La sinopsis me atrapó al instante y, después de meses sin conseguirlo, logré comprarlo con mi plata de chica grande y trabajadora. Quedó varios meses más en un estante, con otros tantos libros que quería leer una vez que terminara la carrera. El atractivo, para mí, estaba en la trama turbia que me habían vendido: una profesora de lengua y literatura secuestra a una alumna que la estuvo atormentando. Después de cinco años leyendo clásicos y más clásicos, quería algo nuevo, contemporáneo y visceral.

Cuando nos fuimos de vacaciones con mi familia, yo una flamante Licenciada en Letras, me llevé este libro. Me lo leí en tres días, no pude parar. La premisa inicial que me llevó a buscarlo pasó a un segundo plano porque, a medida que avanzaban las páginas, me encontré con algo mucho más colosal.

Mandíbula es una historia de terror. Pero no porque una maestra esté secuestrando a su alumna, o al menos no por eso solo. Es la exploración de un terror particularmente femenino. El que se presenta en las relaciones madre-hija/amiga-amiga/maestra-alumna. El que aparece con los cambios del cuerpo, el descubrimiento del yo y del mundo, de la sexualidad, de los vínculos que se complejizan. El mundo que contienen estas páginas es marcadamente femenino. Cada mujer es diferente, compleja y “fucked up” a su modo.

Los ejes más importantes son las relaciones entre Fernanda, la protagonista, y su mejor amiga Annelise, y entre “miss Clara” y su madre. Ahí vive el terror que se puede dar en todo vínculo femenino, y es la mezcla fatal que determina la causalidad de la trama.

Ojeda logra retratar muy bien algo que yo misma viví: la adolescencia en Internet. Logra una verosimilitud que no he visto a otros lograr. Su uso de los términos virtuales, las palabras en inglés mechadas con el español, el mundo de las creepypasta, todo. Se nota que ella misma lo vivió y maneja el vocabulario. Se aprecia mucho desde el otro lado de la página.

Como me encanta lo comparativo, de nuevo traigo una asociación a otro texto. Algo en esta lectura (ejem, el canibalismo, ejem) me lleva al cuento “Carne” de Mariana Enríquez, incluido en el volumen Los peligros de fumar en la cama (2009). Este también consigue retratar muy bien la adolescencia y su vínculo con la cultura del fanatismo, llevado a su punto más extremo. Las hormonas, la idolatría, el dar la vida y el cuerpo por lo que se ama. Motivos muy adolescentes en mi opinión (lo digo como alguien que fue intensamente directioner entre el 2013 y el 2017). El canibalismo es, acaso, el acto de unión/integración más extremo y efectivo.

They are just girls!!!

"I don't want to hurt you, but I'm going to hurt you," Fernanda tells her. "Mark me," Annelise commands. "Make me bleed with your 32 teeth."

Jawbone, Monica Ojeda

A daughter never realizes that one day her turn will come to be the jawed mother. But you’re like my daughter because you’re my student. I take responsibility for all the harm you cause. Open wide. Together we’ll turn off the lights so the White God appears from your mind. The immense truth of the void. You know it well, don’t you? Of course you do. Of course you know it. You know that girls who dream too much end up sick in the head, but now you’re going to learn something important. Be happy. This is the color of fear. Milk white. Death white. God’s snowy skull. Welcome to the volcanic jaws of my house. Let us dive in.

Era mejor poner los pies sobre el cemento de la lógica verbal que yacer desnuda en el océano de la propia mente

Mandíbula. Mónica Ojeda. 

started reading mandíbula and damn, right off the bat it's dark as hell

Estoy leyendo Mandibula de Monica Ojeda y solo voy 6 capitulos pero respecto a Clara? I support womans wrongs...

Somebody: This book was so weird. I didn't really get it

Me, opening the notes app on my phone: Weird? Define weird, like what was the title

Aquí tenemos que ser otras personas, es decir, las que somos en verdad.

#Mónica Ojeda.

i bought books...

jawbone, monica ojéda / hangsaman, shirley jackson

"Why is the white god, white?" "Because white is the perfect silence, and God is the horrible silence of everything.

Jawbone, by Monica Ojeda

Do you have any recommendations for mother/daughter incest fiction? Subtext/undertones or explicit!!

sure!! the most obvious one is sharp objects by gillian flynn, which you probably already know at least by name if you haven't read it or watched it already — it's a textbook emotional incest narrative, one that invests all the women and girls in the house in a relationship that only gets murkier and murkier.

i have heard very interesting things about jawbone by monica ojeda, which i have not yet read personally, but which i have been told is an all around meh novel with a fascinating lesbian oedipus narrative trapped inside of it about a daughter basically subsuming her mother.

thicker than water by kathryn harrison is a must, a fascinating read about a girl who's lost her parents and who endlessly reminisces and fantasizes about them, especially her mother.

in a similar vein, luminal by isabella santacroce is a short, scatological and very trippy novel about two ambiguously lesbian teenage prostitutes living the life in mitteleurope, and our narrator has a near-obsessive fascination for her mother that borders and occasionally touches on the sexual.

sputnik sweetheart by haruki murakami is a novel i can only describe as "if carol was explicitly about the younger woman's desire for a mother figure" — it's not particularly good or compelling, it's your average murakami novel and the narrator is painfully annoying, but it's definitely tropey enough and readable enough if you're looking for some older woman/younger woman motherly projection content.

kind of an out of place recommendation among so many contemporary novels, but you should absolutely read proserpine by mary shelley, a devastating poetic drama about the rape of persephone and demeter's search for her which leans heavily and almost incestuously into their desperate love and longing for each other.

if you're into comics, i can recommend are you my mother? by alison bechdel, a mostly-autobiographical companion piece to the far more famous and father-centric fun home. if you like manga, you need to read kyoko okazaki's helter skelter and pink, both in general and also because the themes of unhealthy attachment between mother and daughter are delightfully executed, especially in pink.

i should also mention the storied tradition in yuri manga of giving the protagonist a mother complex, starting from shiroi heya no futari by ryoko yamagishi (one of the first ever yuri, and a wonderfully melodramatic story at that) and culminating in taiyaki nakamura's fun slice of life stories about teen girls ceaselessly trying to seduce their own mothers (yuru oyako, 1 x 1/2).

i hope this list is a good starting point, and that some of my recommendations may pique your interest! as always, feel free to recommend your own favourite mother/daughter incest stories in the replies if you have any — and for more content like that you can of course check out my lesbian oedipus tag on here and my female oedipus tag on my old blog, though odds are you've probably already browsed them.

Creo que le empecé a temer miedo porque me estaba cambiando. Me estaba haciendo pensar que yo quería cosas que muy en el fondo de mí no quería. Cosas que no puedo querer

Mandíbula. Mónica Ojeda

🦴🪐💌!

🦴 - is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

The obvious answer feels like a cop out and you deserve better. I am extremely inspired by reading! In general, I try to use Neil Gailan and early Holly Black as a style test of my writing; they both inspire me and remind me how much lifting a few well-chosen words can do. (I actively try NOT to write like Robin McKinley, which is my natural state, and much less effective than my cleaner prose.) I am so porous and influenced by what I read that I have to take breaks from writing if I’m reading something very British or very old-fashioned because it contaminates my writing style! I see my writing in other places, too; for example, readers of Girl Out Boy might particularly enjoy the Scapegracer series by HA Clarke because I’ve read those recently and think there is a tone in common.

Recently, I just finished Jawbone by Monica Ojeda, and it is perhaps the most brilliant fucking thing I can IMAGINE and making me feel SO inspired to write grisly and shocking things about girls. Read that book if you wish to recognize yourself as the familiar in horror!!! I have a long and gushing review on goodreads if anyone’s into that.

And obviously, music music music. I get the most ideas when I am driving a car and listening to music and letting my mind slip around and play. My road trip to Columbus last week gave me ideas for so many things, including a project I started in 20-fucking-17 and abandoned a long time ago.

🪐 - name three good things going on in your life right now

1. cat on my lap as we speak! I have three extremely perfect tabby cats

2. I have the most amazing friends. none of them live where I do but I get so much love and support and happiness from them every day! I am so lucky! even though I constantly reschedule my movie nights with @leyley09 and will always vote in support of bailing on d&d with @shoeboxofphotographs12

3. last summer I did physical therapy for my busted shoulder and having an upper body that worked felt so good that I’ve been lifting weights like crazy since then, and I am getting fucking STRONG and it feels really cool. I love having something I can make progress on and see changes with that is about my health and making my body BULKIER and bigger, it feels so fucking healing after a lifetime of taking in poison about what women’s bodies are supposed to be and do. I’m so strong guys. let’s go the gym and listen to fall out boy and make the teenage boy gangs feel like THEY have to stay away from the cable machine for once

💌 - how many unread emails do you have right now?

Five, and they’re unread either because I’m saving them (an especially lovely fic comment, two Butt News substacks from Lindy West) or because I need to take action on the follow-up and I haven’t yet (balance transfer offer, work training). I knew this without checking. They live in my brain. They leech my strength. I prefer to keep my inbox empty of both unread AND read emails because I am a Virgo sun and general freak.

international covers for jawbone by monica ojeda