Sofoco by Laura Ortiz Gómez

Ortiz Gómez’s collection breathes with an urgency that transcends its Colombian setting to touch something universal about human yearning. These nine stories function like stolen breaths: moments of desire, fear, and fleeting happiness captured mid-flight and held just long enough for us to feel their weight. The title itself becomes a perfect metaphor: that suffocating heat that precedes either collapse or the desperate gasp that keeps us alive.

What distinguishes this collection is its refusal to let context overwhelm character. The conflict, the poverty, the streets: they exist as atmosphere, not thesis. Instead, Ortiz Gómez foregrounds the absurd, the erotic, the musical, allowing her characters to exist as fully human rather than symbols of their circumstances. Reading Sofoco alongside Rulfo’s “El llano en llamas” reveals a striking literary kinship across decades: both writers transform the harsh realities of Latin American life into lyrical excavations of the soul. Where Rulfo’s post-revolutionary Mexico speaks through ghosts and dust, Ortiz Gómez’s Colombia pulses with cumbia and sweat, yet both understand that the forgotten margins of our continent hold stories as profound as any metropolitan narrative.

These are stories that understand how life persists in the margins, how dreams survive in impossible conditions, and how the soul’s journey continues even when every external force conspires toward suffocation. Ortiz Gómez inherits Rulfo’s gift for capturing voices that official history ignores, but infuses them with a contemporary vitality: proof that Latin American realism continues to evolve while honoring its roots.