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High Spirits is a collection of eleven interconnected short stories from the Dominican diaspora, from debut author Camille Gomera-Tavarez.
It is a book centered on one extended family – the Beléns – across multiple generations.
It is set in the fictional small town of Hidalpa – and Santo Domingo and Paterson and San Juan and Washington Heights too.
It is told in a style both utterly real and distinctly magical – and its stories explore machismo, mental health, family, and identity.
But most of all, High Spirits represents the first book from Camille Gomera-Tavarez, who takes her place as one of the most extraordinary new voices to emerge in years.
"In 11 short stories, Afro-Dominican debut author Gomera-Tavarez offers slice-of-life peeks into the Beléns of Hidalpa, Dominican Republic...Themes of belonging, social class, patriarchy, and language thread evenly throughout, with Dominican Spanish as well as African American Vernacular English infused with ease...A labor of love imbued with dedication to family." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Full of vivid and poetic imagery, settings worthy of drinking in, and thematic material ripe for contemplation about identity, intergenerational memory, and patriarchy and toxic masculinity, Gomera-Tavarez's soulfully crafted debut is a sensitive, intrinsically feminist work." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This information about High Spirits was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Camille Gomera-Tavarez is an Afro-Dominican graphic designer, illustrator, and authoress from Clifton, New Jersey. She has a BFA in Graphic Design & Creative Writing from the Maryland Institute College of Art and currently works as a graphic designer for progressive political campaigns. She's previously worked for Elle Decor Magazine, Full Bleed Magazine, Big Cartel, and the World Health Organization. In 2020, she founded PlantinMag.com, a magazine initiative for Black Immigrant writers. High Spirits is her fiction debut. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia.
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