Summary
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera follows a young Makina on her journey to an unnamed destination (America) to find and deliver a message to her older brother who had journeyed across the border (Mexican/American) three years prior. The opening scene, a massive sinkhole, serves to foreshadow the instability and violence throughout Makina’s journey. Herrera chooses to keep the places inside of the text anonymous, yet familiar, to suggest a sense of closeness and ambiguity that keeps the journey a little more nightmarish for the readers. At the end of the novel, after having successfully found her brother, she is taken into an underground room– a descent into the underworld– and given a new identity to survive in America, despite intending to return to her homeland.
Zoe James-Collins ’19