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A young couple ponders their opposing religions after one of them finds a cow’s tongue left on their porch. A widow helps her neighbor mourn the death of his wife by burying the woman’s belongings in the backyard. A mother forces her daughter to undergo various rituals to lighten her skin to find a good match. And when a man needs a son as his heir, he brings his new, much younger wife to live with his current wife and daughter, changing his daughter’s life in ways she couldn’t have imagined.
In stunning prose, Zambrano’s stories traverse the delights and fears of parenthood in terrifying clarity, exploring the suppression and display of desire in women and girls in daring candor.
—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"In the emotive, deeply loving, and sometimes erotic pages of Tara Isabel Zambrano's collection Ruined a Little when We Are Born, we meet a talking orgasm with star dust in her edges, a girl who grows extra hands when her mother dies, a skinny boy who makes love to the Devil, thirsty ghosts. In these stories, whole lives, marriages, births, deaths, and afterlifes unfold in the words and blank spaces of just a few pages. The stories build on one another - sensory, sensual, pulsing with life and color -- leaving the reader breathless and starstruck by the wildly inventive twists of Zambrano's vibrant prose."
—Alex DiFrancesco, author of Transmutation
“Every story in this collection touches on family, marriage, motherhood, and other relationships, with stories that bend reality to ones firmly rooted in the realistic, showing characters transformed by life. … Zambrano’s writing on desire is powerful because it is never just a moment between two people; the desire explodes through their whole environment.”
—SmokeLong Quarterly
"Zambrano’s writing is elegant and descriptive... She doesn’t mince words and always sets up her stories with many possibilities of what’s to come in the following paragraphs."
—Asian review of Books
“In her captivating new collection, Tara Isabel Zambrano deftly blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, weaving together narratives that explore the surreal within the confines of the everyday. Each story is a masterclass in brevity and depth, in precision and elegance. A stunning and remarkably original collection.”
—Andrew Porter, author of The Disappeared
"Enchanting and heartbreaking, Zambrano’s prose pulses with intensity, magic, and insight. The characters in this collection navigate femininity, family, and desire in ways that will keep you captivated and wanting more."
–Steve Edwards, author of Breaking into the Backcountry