Hear a New Short Story from Laia Jufresa
This Week from the Emergence Magazine Podcast
Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories and more.
This week, we share a short story by Mexican author Laia Jufresa, translated by Sophie Hughes, that imagines the chaos of a world ravaged and divided by climate change. In “Be Dammed,” thousands of climate refugees find themselves forming settlements on boats as they wait endlessly to cross a heavily guarded border in pursuit of safety. One woman, tasked with holding prayers for their salvation, negotiates the entanglement of faith and politics as she considers who, or what, truly has the power to change their circumstances.
Read this short story.
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Listen to the rest of this story on Emergence Magazine’s website or by subscribing to the podcast.
Laia Jufresa was born in Mexico City and grew up in the cloud forest of Veracruz and Paris. She is the author of El Esquinista and Umami. In 2017 she was named one of the Bogotá39, the thirty-nine most promising young writers in Latin America. Her fiction has appeared in Vogue, Words Without Borders, and McSweeney’s, and her nonfiction in El País, Netflix, and BBC Radio.
Sophie Hughes has translated over twenty books by Spanish and Latin American writers, including Fernanda Melchor, Alia Trabucco Zerán, José Revueltas, and Enrique Vila-Matas. She has been nominated for the International Booker Prize four times and is the recipient of the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize.
Juan Bernabeu is an artist and illustrator trained in Valencia, Berlin, and Italy. He communicates through line and drawing, using patterns and color to bring images to life. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, This American Life, and elsewhere.
