In my creative writing and lit classes I was taught writers like Simpson, Gaitskill and Atwood. Her work was being taught in a sociology class. I highly recommend Bang by Daniel Peñ a, Butterfly Boy by Rigoberto Gonz ález, Mean by Myriam Gurba and The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes, all of which are by Chicano writers who have dedicated themselves to researching, exploring and writing about and around the border and immigration.

Photograph: ©Erika Morillo / The Shipman Agency Nguyen is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees.Īuthor Angie Cruz. While politics and revolution form the background of the novel, the foreground is all about the power, pleasure and peril of kinship and romance, set in a beautifully, intimately drawn portrait of the Filipino American community. Castillo, of Filipina descent herself, focuses on the lives of documented and undocumented Filipina/os and traces their origins to the impact of American colonization in the Philippines and the US support for the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. The Bay is dominated by San Francisco, but the 408 is the less than glamorous land of bedroom communities including Castillo’s Milpitas and my San Jose. He combines that intimate knowledge with a master novelist’s flair to pull us into a family whose struggles have historical roots but whose feelings are ones that we all know – love, loss and longing.Įlaine Castillo’s America is Not the Heart has a special place in my heart because it’s set in the 408 – the area code for the south bay of the Bay Area. Urrea is an expert on the border and migration, having spent years and many books exploring these topics. This is the Great American Novel, if by “American” we mean the greater America that is both north and south of the border. The novel has it all – humor, history, politics, emotions, all packaged into a highly readable account of a Mexican American family that straddles the border of the United States and Mexico. Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels is the Latinx novel that Oprah should have picked for her book club.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees.

Must love books novel