Huesera: The Bone Woman (2023)

Michelle Garza Cervera’s Huesera: The Bone Woman centers on Valeria, a young woman in the middle of a substantial life transition. She’s on the precipice of becoming a wife and a mother, slotting neatly into the space left open for her by the patriarchal society in which she lives and has lived and leaving behind her former life as a music-loving, independent woodworker. Unfortunately, she is as haunted by her impending motherhood as she is by the titular la huesera—a faceless female figure who appears to move by constantly reconfiguring her bones. Valeria’s attempts to free herself from this bone woman mirror her attempts to transition smoothly into her new life, in that she fails routinely at both. La huesera haunts her daily life, leaving people to question her viability as a mother, and Valeria’s lack of satisfaction with her life leave her asking similar questions. These misgivings reach their peak after the baby is born, when Valeria, visibly in a state akin to possession, locks her in the fridge when she won’t stop crying through the night. Ultimately, Valeria seeks the aid of a group of curanderas, folk-medicine women, who successfully banish la huesera, leaving both mother and child unharmed. Valeria brings the baby back to her would-be husband and leaves them both behind, her future blessedly uncertain. Valeria’s struggle to excise herself from this culturally constructed simulacrum of who she should be and to instead give herself the opportunity to become who she is can be understood through Julia Kristeva’s idea of abjection.