Courtesy of TexasMonthly
Posted November 1, 2019
In a time when anti-Latinx rhetoric is painful and unavoidable, and anti-Latinx violence hits close to home, it’s unacceptable that Latinx literature occupies such a small space in the U.S. literary canon. If the language of white supremacy attempts to dehumanize us, to erase our value and the richness of our contributions to this world, it’s more critical than ever to celebrate our voices. Katie Gutierrez of the Texas Monthly asks us to consider a list of titles corrective to the white male canon that has dominated literature for so long—and an insistence that we take up the space we deserve. On this list is A|U author, Natalia Sylvester.
Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester grew up in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley; she’s now based in Austin. In Sylvester’s second novel, Everyone Knows You Go Home, Isabel first meets her father-in-law, Omar, on her wedding day—but Omar is already dead, appearing as an apparition on Día de los Muertos. Isabel’s husband, Martin, has no interest in talking to his dead father, who left the family when Martin was seven, but Isabel agrees to help Omar try to make amends with his family. The novel moves through the couple’s wedding night to Omar’s yearly reappearances. It also goes back in time to 1981, tracing Omar’s journey to Texas from Mexico just as Isabel and Martin contend with the arrival of Martin’s undocumented seventeen-year-old cousin. Everyone Knows You Go Home is a spellbinding story of the cost of leaving, the legacy of grief, and the power of redemption.
Read the article here and check out the book today! And don’t miss Natalia’s new YA novel, out in May 2020 – Running.
