Big Cats and the Femme Fatale in Yda H. Addis's "A Human Tigress"

What is it about?

"Mexico is a queer country." So begins the 1893 short story "A Human Tigress" by the American-born author Yda Hillis Addis, who spent her formative years in Mexico, engaged frequently in border crossing, and published original fiction, Mexican legends, and journalism in periodicals on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Addis was born in Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, shortly after the unceremonious departure of her family, which held proslavery sympathies, from Lawrence in 1857. Roughly a decade later, she relocated with her family to Mexico, where she accompanied her father, the photographer Alfred Shea Addis, on his travels through the country, became proficient in Spanish, and learned several Mexican folktales and legends. Here, Trevino details how Addis creates a feminine force that enacts the most effective (and most extreme) method of opposing male sexual license.

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