Review
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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 Reviews
Listed 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 of short fiction can cut close to the , 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 O 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
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About the Author
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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.
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