New Testaments: Stories

(Paperback)

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The lives of working class Mexican America, where everyday stories offer a portal to myth and fable.

This collection of eleven stories is the newest installment of an ongoing, multi-volume literary documentary project, penned by one of the contemporary legends of Chicanx literature.

Dagoberto Gilb's cast of characters includes a young family whose exposure to a mysterious cloud of gas alters their lives forever; a high school dropout whose choice to learn the ways of the world from the adults at work in his uncles industrial laundry leads him into a dangerous dalliance; a former high-rise union carpenter who agrees to meet up with an eager old flame; an aging Chicano, living alone, whose children watch over him for signs of decline; and more.

These are stories about working class people who come and go mostly unnoticed or ignored, whose lives are not fodder for literary tropes or cliches. They are neither heroes nor villains, just regular people with their flaws and merits, facing the challenges and questions posed by everyday life. Gilb writes in a distinctive, appealing voice, welcoming the reader in with an easy sense of familiarity, and the effect is spare on the surface, but profound. Deftly capturing the nuances of interpersonal relationships in a simple word or gesture, he peels back the surface of seemingly unremarkable encounters to reveal layers of myth and uncanny surrealism, propelled by the momentum of new, changing times.

Reviews

Praise for Before the End, After the Beginning:

[A] collection distinguished by a steadfast lightness of touch . . . [Gilb] brings lived-through-it detail to all of these stories.Susannah Meadows, The New York Times

[Readers] luxuriate in . . . prose that is as sudden as it is meditative. . . . [Before the End, After the Beginning] places Gilbs talent for rendering the mundane into myth on full display.Robert Ontiveros, San Francisco Chronicle

Accessible and resonant . . . [these] are such true, human stories.San Antonio Express

Stark, realistic, and told in mostly gritty matter-of-fact prose . . . Gilb portrays his characters simply and powerfully, without apology; even his unnamed characters represent the plight of not only every working-class Mexicano but Everyman.Boston Globe

The situations [in these stories] are part of the everyday, normal struggle to keep ones head above water and ones heart sane. Dagoberto Gilb writes about these matters in a mature and subtle manner.NPRs All Things Considered

Dont dare put Gilbs writing in any category. Hes as fine at the lyrical as he is at the vernacular. And his subject is as universal as it can get: the mystery of existence . . .Dallas Morning News

Author Bio

Dagoberto Gilb is the author of nine books, including The Magic of Blood, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acua, Woodcuts of Women, Gritos, The Flowers, and, most recently, Before the End, After the Beginning. Among his honors are the PEN/Hemingway Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Whiting Writers Award. His work has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner Awards and has been honored several times in Texas as a proud part of its literary tradition. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Best American Essays, OHenry Prize Stories, and many other venues, much of it widely reprinted in textbooks. He is the founding editor of Huizache, a groundbreaking literary journal that features contemporary Chicanx writing. Born and raised in Los Angeles to an American father and a Mexican mother, he now lives in Austin and Mexico City.