Juicy Mangos

Juicy Mangos will shatter your ideas of female innocence forever. Here, the smartest, sexiest literary writers are gathered to tell stories of women at their rawest and most intimate. Each of the seven stories centers around a holiday -- from Valentine’s Day to Christmas -- when these enticing characters slip out of their daily roles and take on new, daring personas: A married woman finds a back door to Eden where fantastical orgies force her to confront her true and dangerous sexual desires, a historiographer experiences a lustful affair while wearing an enchanting antique dress as an erotic disguise, a sex-toy saleswoman takes on a business partner with benefits to boost her sales.

With exotic backdrops around the world and beautiful, complex characters, Juicy Mangos is sexy enough to keep you glued to the page. But like its diverse protagonists, the stories are smart and provocative and will leave you hot long after your touch on the page has cooled.

Michelle Herrera Mulligan coedited and contributed an essay to
Border-Line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass,
and Cultural Shifting. Her articles have appeared in Time,
Woman’s Day, and Publishers Weekly. A former editor at
Latina, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editors Letter

Sweet, juicy mangos. The soft sound of Spanish drifting from glossed lips...congas pulsing on a crowded beach...women drinking passion-fruit margaritas as they shake their generous curves in time...exposed backsides of wet, tanned flesh. The word Latina seems almost synonymous with erótica, as naturally connected as bodies that stick together on a dance floor.

When Johanna Castillo, an editor at Atria Books, called to ask me to coordinate the first-ever English-language Latina erotic fiction anthology, I responded as any self-respecting Latina would: I pumped up my sex appeal -- even though I consider myself a major nerd. ”Erótica? Claro que sí,” I whispered into the phone in Spanish, my hand tucked seductively around my mouth, so my co-workers wouldn’t hear. ”I could definitely do that. I love erótica.” I made sure to use the Spanish pronunciation of the word, exaggerating the r in erotica so that my sexy Ecuadorian editor would know I was the real thing. Then I hung up the phone, went to the ladies room, and broke into a cold sweat. ”Erotica, what was I thinking?” My head was spinning. ”All I know about erotica can be summed up in the three dusty books I store behind the Harry Potter series on my bookshelves. How am I going to be able to attach my name to a cover that could possibly feature a naked body? What if my abuelita finds out?” When I went to bed that night, an even more serious concern dawned on me. ”What the hell am I supposed to write about?”

I resolved that night to call the editor first thing in the morning and tell her, sheepishly, that I wasn’t the right one for the job.