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A Novel
by Allan Martín Nava Sosa
Cría cuervos y te sacaran los ojos: Raise crows and they will take out your eyes.
A boy wakes up with a knife in his hand. It's the early '90s in Stockton, CA, when Christian is caught sleepwalking in the kitchen by his family—the beginning of a curse unleashed by an aunt. To save Christian and the family from the curse, the family seeks out a curandero who promises salvation, but at a price Christian wishes he didn't have to pay.
As Christian grows up the curse follows him. His father emotionally and physically torments him, his mother's health spirals, his relationship with his brother deteriorates; nothing goes his way. Christian finds solace in a group of friends, bonded together by the sufferings that plague their community. As the childhood chaos of ripping and running in order to survive breaks way to an adolescence beyond his local neighborhood and a lifeline in the form of writing, Christian must decide: be consumed and enact the same violence that has plagued him, or break the cycle, once and for all.
And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the power of memory and the curses we inherit from our family, and how to overcome them. Told in a voice that is clear and unflinching, this is ultimately a story of redemption.
"An insultingly good debut from a writer I'll follow forever. And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is a poetic gut punch that heals just as much as it haunts." —Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
"Poetic, defiant, and unflinching, And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is incendiary from the opening paragraph, and never relents. A.M. Sosa is a young writer to watch."—Jonathan Evison, author of Lawn Boy and The Heart of Winter
"And I'll Take Out Your Eyes introduces an urgent new voice that fearlessly captures a coming-of-age shaped by fury and fear. At once brutal, funny, harrowing, and tender, A.M. Sosa's searing debut reminds us why fiction still matters, why it can be lifesaving."—Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Likes and Madeleine Is Sleeping
This information about And I'll Take Out Your Eyes 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.
A. M. Sosa (they/them) is a queer Mexican-American writer from Stockton, CA, and a recent graduate of UC Irvine's MFA Programs in Writing where they were awarded the 2022 Henfield Prize. In 2023, they were named a Tin House scholar. Their fiction has been published in Zyzzyva and the Santa Monica Review.
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