A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

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Review Named a Most Anticipated Book by Kirkus Reviews and The Millions"Troncoso's sharp-edged stories speak to the difficult lives of those who, as he writes, are born behind in a race they must run all the same."---Kirkus ReviewsListed as One of Fifteen Great New Books by Latinos for Hispanic Heritage Month by NBC News"These poignant short stories shed a startling light on the middle-class experience of Chicanos in New York... Sergio Troncoso dispels the myth of assimilation as a safe haven and reminds readers that distance from a working-class upbringing doesn't absolve a person from the responsibility to one's community. The wounds of leaving home never truly heal."---NBC News Digital"From the start, this book takes place not so much at the border of things as on their edge: the contact zones of life and death, past and present, here and there, old and young. In the characters' minds, we find ourselves on one side of a divide, perpetually looking back or across. With Troncoso, that endeavor is often as dark as it is funny.The El Paso author's newest collection depicts contemporary Mexican American life with a characteristic blend of sorrow and humor. It's his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon."---The Texas Observer"El Paso native Sergio Troncoso's excellent new short story collection ... takes the reader far, yet not far at all, from the currently troubled Texas-Mexico border... Where he finds hope for the future, his and the world's, is in the simple yet wise words of his now-departed relatives and in memories and lessons ingrained in him at the Texas-Mexico border."---Lone Star Literary Life"Chicano literature began with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when a sizable Latino population was separated from its land and heritage. Sergio Troncoso has written brilliantly of this disruption and its pull."---Journal of Alta California"The knife of short fiction can cut close to the bone, and Troncoso yields a razor-sharp scalpel. His characters have escaped whatever it is that stood in their way, be it old superstitions or even older racism, but too often the price they pay has left them injured, not healed, adrift in their self-imposed exile, far from what should be home, yet in a place where they must be to survive."---La Bloga"Sergio Troncoso is one of our most brilliant minds in Latina/o Literature. These new stories demonstrate that he is also possessed of a great corazón. This is a world-class collection. Troncoso continues to raise the bar for the rest of us."---Luis Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels"A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son is Troncoso at his absolute finest ... a masterwork bursting with immigrant intimacies, electrifying truths and hard-earned tenderness.  This is a book I could not let go of, that took me from El Paso to New England to Mexico and to the labyrinths beyond.  In these aching stories Troncoso has perfectly captured the diasporic dilemma of those of us who have had to leave our first worlds - how that exile both haunts and liberates,heals and injures.  An extraordinary performance."---Junot Díaz, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"Our bodies are legacies that encompass landscapes, borders, ancestors, histories that bind us to the past.  Here are stories lodged in the geography of polarities and the taut tightrope act between."---Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street"In his thought-provoking collection of stories, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, Sergio Troncoso introduces us to a wide cast of characters, each unique and particular in his or her own way, and yet ever so universal in terms of the human experience. Troncoso's stories are timely and relevant; only with knowledge can one beat back the bear of a colonial past."---Christina Chiu, author of Troublemaker and Other Stories"I love Sergio Troncoso's new collection, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son. It traces epic journeys, both of body and soul, from places like Ysleta in Far West Texas to sophisticated avenues in Boston and Manhattan. But the best part of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son is the magic of Troncoso's language, which sings from each page. This book is a triumph, the work of a master writer at the peak of his game."---W. K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, A Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Movie Read more About the Author Sergio Troncoso is the author of The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, and the novels The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Patch of Dust. He's taught at the Yale Writers' Workshop for many years. Troncoso is Vice President of the Texas Institute of Letters and a member of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Alumni Hall of Fame. A Fulbright scholar, he has won numerous awards, including the International Latino Book Award, the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, and the Southwest Book Award. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and attended Harvard College and Yale University, where he earned graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy. Read more See all Editorial Reviews