There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories by Ruben Reyes Jr. (Hardcover

Description

Fiction – Short Story Collection – Satire – Magical Realism – Absurdist – Hispanic amp; Latino\nRELEASE DATE: 8\/6\/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE )\nAn electrifying debut story collection about Central American identity that spans past, present, and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.\nAn ordinary man wakes one morning to discover hes a famous reggaetn star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man.\nIn There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choiceschoices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans.\nBlazing with heart, humor, and inimitable style, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new lifewhether willfully or forcedwith piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.\nAUTHOR BIO:\nRuben Reyes Jr.is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College. His writing has appeared inThe Boston Globe,The Washington Post,Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Brooklyn.There Is a Rio Grande in Heavenis his debut.\n\”In this rich, lively and imaginative collection, Reyes’ presents the richness of the American Latine and immigrant experience, not as we are perceived, but as we know and recognize ourselves to be. In Reyes’ hands, robots, alternative colonial histories, and dream sequences are more than storytelling devices. They are as real and vivid as the grief, abandoned love and homelands these characters are trying to reconcile with their American realities. These are stories to treasure and ponder, long after the last page has been turned.\” –Xochitl Gonzalez,New York Timesbestselling author ofOlga Dies Dreaming