After about a decade in Europe, María Luisa Puga returned to Mexico and published her first novel, Las Posibilidades del Odio (The Possibilities of Hate), in 1978.
There was a lot of critical attention about her first novel because of the comparison she made of Kenya’s seventy-year struggle for a better future with the situation in Mexico.
Common themes in Puga’s work include the socio-psychological makeup of the individual and history.
She is said to examine the social situation in Mexico from the late 1960s to the present day by telling her own personal story.
Her unpublished diaries, where Puga touched upon many facets of her literary and personal life, were donated to the University of Texas at Austin's Benson Latin American Collection by her sister Patricia in January 2017.