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If Junot Diaz's critically acclaimed collection Drown and Janet Mock's Emmy-winning series Pose produced offspring, Alejandro Heredia's Loca would be their firstborn.
It's 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he's held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she'd escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo's worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.
Loca follows one daring year in the lives of young people living at the edge of their own patience and desires. With expansive grace, it reveals both the grueling conditions that force people to migrate and the possibility of friendship as home when family, nations, and identity groups fall short.
"The narrative lacks momentum in places, but Heredia credibly chronicles Sal's and Charo's pain as well as their pleasures, as they attempt to find their ways in the world. Readers will look forward to seeing what Heredia does next." —Publishers Weekly
"Heredia explores the challenges of urban adulting before it became a verb." —Kirkus Reviews
"Heredia writes to all the locas who, torn between depression and desire, dare to keep moving, chase dreams, and face their failures nonetheless." —Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last
"In a novel that is as tender as it is brilliant, Heredia writes with ferocity and warmth." —Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Family Lore
"A queer book, yes, a Dominican book, too, a Spanglish book, sure, and as such a quintessentially American novel, a beautiful one." —Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement
"In this remarkable debut, Alejandro Heredia traces young lives from the streets of Santo Domingo to the streets of the Bronx, capturing the heartbreak of queer youth, a woman's rebellion against the confines of motherhood, and, above all, the pain and power of friendship that extends across seas, and borders, and the struggle of working people to survive in America. It is the most generously written novel I have read in a very long time, and that generosity is a beautiful thing." —Adam Haslett, Pulitzer Prize and National Award Book Award finalist for Imagine Me Gone and You Are Not A Stranger Here
This information about Loca 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.
Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV's Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Loca is his debut novel.
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