| Vendor | |
|---|---|
|
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Categories | |
LIKE HAPPINESS
LIKE HAPPINESS tells the story of a young woman who spent many years in an intense relationship with a legendary author is forced to reconsider their connection when a journalist exposes his dark side - catalyzing a reckoning with gender, ambition, Latinx identity, and the wholly unexpected ways power dynamics can manifest.
"You - the artist who had brought me into focus - had, at the end, decided to erase me. The pain was so acute that the night I finished your novel I spat blood."
A different novel from the one in your hands marks the end of our narrator's friendship with celebrated Puerto Rican author M. Domínguez. Their relationship - a gray space somewhere between father/daughter and romantic partners - was born out of a fan letter written in Tatum's undergrad dorm room (to a then 30-something Domínguez.) She was drawn to his stories with their mix of Spanish and English and their Latinx characters who she knew in real life but had never before seen immortalized in the literary canon. Tatum falls easily into Domínguez's grasp, moving to New York City to stay in his orbit as she tries to discern who she's meant to be. But when Domínguez fictionalizes their relationship for his own career gains, Tatum feels betrayed and cuts off contact.
Years later, a journalist intent on exposing Domínguez's dark side prompts Tatum to break her silence. LIKE HAPPINESS is her account to Domínguez of their story, a reckoning with gender and ambition within Latinx politics, and a reclamation of agency. It is an inquiry into the insidious nature of grooming as well as a character study of a girl who would do anything for the man acting as her cultural mirror.
LIKE HAPPINESS is for readers who love intense and unapologetically inquisitive stories like Raven Leilani's Luster, who appreciate a narrative bridging the liminal space between believed story and honest story like Susan Choi's Trust Exercise, or who are searching for a book exploring the literary world and its questionable men like Sigrid Nunez's The Friend.
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner. A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast,Washington Square Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015.
A different novel from the one in your hands marks the end of our narrator's friendship with celebrated Puerto Rican author M. Domínguez. Their relationship - a gray space somewhere between father/daughter and romantic partners - was born out of a fan letter written in Tatum's undergrad dorm room (to a then 30-something Domínguez.) She was drawn to his stories with their mix of Spanish and English and their Latinx characters who she knew in real life but had never before seen immortalized in the literary canon. Tatum falls easily into Domínguez's grasp, moving to New York City to stay in his orbit as she tries to discern who she's meant to be. But when Domínguez fictionalizes their relationship for his own career gains, Tatum feels betrayed and cuts off contact.
Years later, a journalist intent on exposing Domínguez's dark side prompts Tatum to break her silence. LIKE HAPPINESS is her account to Domínguez of their story, a reckoning with gender and ambition within Latinx politics, and a reclamation of agency. It is an inquiry into the insidious nature of grooming as well as a character study of a girl who would do anything for the man acting as her cultural mirror.
LIKE HAPPINESS is for readers who love intense and unapologetically inquisitive stories like Raven Leilani's Luster, who appreciate a narrative bridging the liminal space between believed story and honest story like Susan Choi's Trust Exercise, or who are searching for a book exploring the literary world and its questionable men like Sigrid Nunez's The Friend.
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner. A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast,Washington Square Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015.
| Available products |
|---|
|
Book
Published 2024-03-26 by Celadon |
|
Book
Published by Celadon |