Marta Veneranda, a Latina neoyorkina, finds that she inspires the confessional in people. In fact, when people come to her, they feel the need to reveal their most embarrassing and shameful stories. And through these reluctantly told tales, where characters enter and leave each other's narrations, Rivera-Valdes revisits and questions our most basic behavioral assumptions.
In "Little Poisons," the narrator shares with Marta the minutiae of her self-help book–assisted liberation from her philandering husband, whom she will eventually poison to death, and whose mistress she will befriend: "In the fifteen years of marriage he would tell me everything, even about his sexual escapades-if he couldn't share them with me, who would he share them with? Besides, that way no one could come running to me spreading rumors."
Beneath the humor is a dead-serious scrutiny of the commingling of Anglo and Latino cultures. At heart, the stories are an exposé of the comforts and discomforts of that cohabitation.

Translated by Dick Cluster, Marina Harss, Mark Schafer and Alan West-Duran
Marta Veneranda, a Latina nuyorkina, finds that she inspires the confessional in people. In fact, when people come to her, they feel the need to reveal their most embarrassing and shameful stories. And through these reluctantly told tales, where characters enter and leave each other's narrations, Rivera-Valdes revisits and questions our most basic behavioral assumptions.
In "Little Poisons," the narrator shares with Marta the minutiae of her self-help-book-assisted liberation from her philandering husband, whom she will eventually poison to death, and whose mistress she will befriend: "In the fifteen years of marriage he would tell me everything, even about his sexual escapades—if he couldn't share them with me, who would he share them with? Besides, that way no one could come running to me spreading rumors."
The Forbidden Stories is the author's inspired response to a statement made by a Cuban politician regarding the conflicted attitude towards homosexuality in Cuba. Rivera-Valdés creates the character of Marta Veneranda, a graduate student working on a thesis which aims to graph clinically the discrepancy between an individual's sense of shame and society's attitude toward the incidents that inspire self-censorship in a person. But the orderly study becomes unruly as the subjects interviewed reveal their hidden stories.
Beneath the humor is a dead-serious scrutiny of the commingling of Anglo and Latino cultures. At heart, The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda are an exposé of the comforts and discomforts of that cohabitation.

“The mad, the curious, the inexplicable in human behavior—that which is not sanctioned by society—are the pivotal points in Sonia Rivera-Valdes's narratives. Her characters live fully, without missteps, precisely because the author has turned the tables on propriety.” –Karla Quionez, In These Times

“Sonia Rivera-Valdés presents a prose that is unconstrained, daring, reminiscent of Anaïs Nin.” –Zaida Corniell, OH! Magazine

“This work promises to be revelatory.” –Library Journal