Daniela Catrileo Piñen review and information of the content of the 2019 stories by the Chilean writer of Mapuche decent. Charco Press will publish the English translation of Piñen, the Danilea Catrileo stories, on April 21, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.
Daniela Catrileo Piñen review
- “Piñen’ refers to the grime that forms on skin when sweat mixes with the dust of the earth. In Chile, this Mapuche word also carries connotations of poverty. Through this lens, Daniela Catrileo offers a powerful perspective—linking two enduring sites of violence and disgrace in the country: marginalization as a geopolitical strategy of control, and the postcolonial repression still enacted by the state.” (El Desconcierto)
- “Catrileo sketches out a poetic and political map… of Andean territory.” (La Nación)
Piñen
- Author: Daniela Catrileo (Chile)
- Book type: stories
- Original: Piñen (2019)
- English Translation: Jacob Edelstein
- Publisher: Charco Press
- Released: April 21, 2026
- Length: 14 pages
- Format: paperback / ebook
- Prize: £ 11.99
- Order book from: Amazon
Blurb of the Daniela Catrileo poetry collection
A fierce, tender collection of stories about the lives, traumas, and dreams of Mapuche youth in modern-day Chile.
Jesús, Valeska, Yajaira, and Ale are some of the vivid characters that inhabit the stories told in Piñen, a book that casts an unflinching gaze on the stark margins of urban life. Within its pages unfold the bullet-ridden death of a big shot from the blocks; the fraught, often violated sexuality of women in a displaced community; the unwavering bond between two friends navigating the waria ; the toxicity that seeps through youth and the distances that inevitably come with growing up; and, finally, a fierce declaration of love to the clandestine spirit of a brother. These are young lives that drift through the many peripheries of the city – lives shaped by abortion and abuse, drugs and Britpop – carrying a hope as immense as the injustice that defines their days.
The stories that make up Piñen invite the reader into an intimate, often overlooked space – those small, enclosed rooms where the everyday tragedies of the many silently unfold. With brutal realism and lyrical restraint, Daniela Catrileo renders these acts of courage and violence with masterful precision, granting voice and presence to those rarely seen in literature.
Daniela Catrileo was born in Santiago de Chile in 1987 and is a Mapuche writer. She’s also an artist, a philosophy lecturer and an activist committed to the rights of Chile’s indigenous population. She is a member of the Colectivo Mapuche Rangiñtulewfü and part of the editorial team for Yene, a digital magazine featuring art, writing, and critical thought from across Wallmapu and the Mapuche diaspora. She has published two collections of poems: Río herido (Wounded River) (2016) and Guerra florida (Flourishing War) (2018), for which she was awarded the Premio Municipal de Literatura by the city of Santiago de Chile in 2019; two chapbooks: El territorio del viaje (The Journey’s Territory) (2017, 2022) and Las aguas dejaron de unirse a otras aguas (The Waters Ceased to Join Other Waters) (2020); and a book of short stories: Piñen (2019), forthcoming from Charco Press in 2026. Chilco is her first novel and her first book to be translated into English.
