In cities and fields, Mexican American men are leading lives of quiet desperation. In this collection of thirteen startling stories, Rigoberto Gonzalez weaves complex portraits of Latinos leading ordinary, practically invisible lives while navigating the dark waters of suppressed emotion--true-to-life characters who face emotional hurt, socioeconomic injustice, indignities in the workplace, or sexual repression. But because their culture expects men to symbolize power and control, they dare not risk succumbing to displays of weakness.

Gonzalez shines an empathetic light into the shadows of Mexican culture to portray characters who suffer in silence--men both straight and gay who must come to terms with their grief, loneliness, and pain. By exploring the private moments of men trapped inside unforgiving stereotypes, he critiques long-held assumptions of Latino behavior. He shows us individuals who must break out of various closets to become fully realized adults, and makes us feel the emotional pain of men in a culture that recognizes only the pain and hardship of women.

"Men without Bliss" conveys the silent suffering of all men, not just Latinos. It will open readers' eyes to unexpected facets of Latino culture, and perhaps of their own lives.

In the grim reality of Southern California's grape fields, even the sun is a dark spot. For the migrant grape pickers in "Crossing Vines," Rigoberto Gonzalez's novel that spans a single workday, the sun is a constant, malevolent force. The characters endure back-breaking, monotonous work as they succumb to the whims of their corrupt bosses. Each minute the sun rises higher in the sky is an eternity.

The textures, smells, sights, and emotions of their daily existences engulf the lives of the Mexican laborers. Scarce drinking water, sweltering heat, splintered fingers, contempt for the job, and violence toward one another compose their unflinchingly dark world. In Gonzalez's brutally honest story, the characters are compelled forward mercilessly by the rising crisis that envelops their interconnected stories. This uncompromisingly thought-provoking tale gives names and faces to the anonymous agricultural laborers, whose lives are like the tangled vines of the fruits of their labor.

Not since Tomas Rivera's ." . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him" has a novel converged on the lives of migrant workers so profoundly. Like Rivera, Gonzalez employs nostalgia for Mexican tradition as he looks at the family feuds, economic injustices, and racism prevalent in the migrant worker experience.

Pivotal Voices, Era of Transition gathers Rigoberto Gonzalez's most important essays and book reviews that consider the work of emerging poets whose identities and political positions are transforming what readers expect from contemporary poetry. Many of these voices represent intersectional communities, such as queer writers of color like Natalie Diaz, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, and Eduardo C. Corral, and many writers, such as Carmen Gimenez Smith and David Tomas Martinez, have deep connections to their Latino communities. Collectively these writers are enriching American poetry to reflect a more diverse, panoramic, and socially conscious literary landscape. This much needed look at diverse voices also features essays on the poets' literary ancestors including Juan Felipe Herrera, Alurista, Francisco X. Alarcon, and speeches that address the need for poetry as agency. This book fills a glaring gap in contemporary literary scholarship. Very little existing poetry scholarship focuses exclusively on writers of color, particularly Latino poetry - a field in which Gonzalez is considered an authority. The book makes important observations about the relevance and urgency of the work coming from writers representing marginalized communities, many of whom will undoubtedly become the most influential voices of their generation. Gonzalez is the first to identity them as such and to illustrate why their work is as exquisitely crafted as it is socially resonant. He also makes important connections between the Latino, African American, Asian American and Native American literatures by positioning them as a collective movement critiquing, challenging, and reorienting the direction of American poetry with their nuanced and politicized verse. Gonzalez's inclusive vision covers a wide landscape of writers, opening literary doors for sexual and ethnic minorities.

In the Mexican Catholic tradition, retablos are ornamental structures made of carved wood framing an oil painting of a devotional image, usually a patron saint. Acclaimed author and essayist Rigoberto Gonzalez commemorates the passion and the pain of these carvings in his new volume "Red-Inked Retablos, "a moving memoir of human experience and thought.This frank new collection masterfully combines accounts from Gonzalez's personal life with reflections on writers who have influenced him. The collection offers an in-depth meditation on the development of gay Chicano literature and the responsibilities of the Chicana/o writer.Widely acclaimed for giving a voice to the Chicano GLBT community, Gonzalez's writing spans a wide range of genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual books for children and young adults. Introduced by Women's Studies professor Maythee Rojas, "Retablos "collects thirteen pieces that together provide a narrative of Gonzalez's life from his childhood through his career as a writer, critic, and mentor. In "Red-Inked Retablos, "Gonzalez continues to expand his oeuvre on "mariposa" (literally, "butterfly") memory, a genre he pioneered in which Chicano/a writers openly address non-traditional sexuality. For Gonzalez, mariposa memory is important testimony not only about reconfiguring personal identity in relation to masculinity, culture, and religion. It's also about highlighting values like education, shaping a sex-positive discourse, and exercising agency through a public voice. It's about making the queer experience a Chicano experience and the Chicano experience a queer one.

Burdened by poverty, illiteracy, and vulnerability as Mexican immigrants to California's Coachella Valley, three generations of Gonzalez men turn to vices or withdraw into depression. As brothers Rigoberto and Alex grow to manhood, they are haunted by the traumas of their mother's early death, their lonely youth, their father's desertion, and their grandfather's invective. Rigoberto's success in escaping-first to college and then by becoming a writer-is blighted by his struggles with alcohol and abusive relationships, while Alex contends with difficult family relations, his own rocky marriage, and fatherhood. Descending into a dark emotional space that compromises their mental and physical health, the brothers eventually find hope in aiding each other. This is an honest and revealing window into the complexities of Latino masculinity, the private lives of men, and the ways they build strength under the weight of grief, loss, and despair.

Rigoberto Gonzalez, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, takes a second piercing look at his past through a startling new lens: hunger. The need for sustenance originating in childhood poverty, the adolescent emotional need for solace and comfort, the adult desire for a larger world, another lover, a different body-all are explored by Gonzalez in a series of heartbreaking and poetic vignettes. Each vignette is a defining moment of self-awareness, every moment an important step in a lifelong journey toward clarity, knowledge, and the nourishment that comes in various forms-even ""the smallest biggest joys"" help piece together a complex portrait of a gay man of colour who at last defines himself by what he learns, not by what he yearns for.

In cities and fields, Mexican American men are leading lives of quiet desperation. In this collection of thirteen startling stories, Rigoberto GonzAlez weaves complex portraits of Latinos leading ordinary, practically invisible lives while navigating the dark waters of suppressed emotion-true-to-life characters who face emotional hurt, socioeconomic injustice, indignities in the workplace, or sexual repression. But because their culture expects men to symbolize power and control, they dare not risk succumbing to displays of weakness.GonzAlez shines an empathetic light into the shadows of Mexican culture to portray characters who suffer in silence-men both straight and gay who must come to terms with their grief, loneliness, and pain. By exploring the private moments of men trapped inside unforgiving stereotypes, he critiques long-held assumptions of Latino behavior. He shows us individuals who must break out of various closets to become fully realized adults, and makes us feel the emotional pain of men in a culture that recognizes only the pain and hardship of women. Men without Bliss conveys the silent suffering of all men, not just Latinos. It will open readers' eyes to unexpected facets of Latino culture, and perhaps of their own lives.

In the second of his trio of acclaimed memoirs, Rigoberto Gonzalez looks at his past through a startling lens: hunger. A childhood of neglect, adolescent yearnings, and adult desire for a larger world, another lover, a different body-all are explored by Gonzalez in a series of heartbreaking and poetic vignettes.

Selected by Rigoberto Gonzales as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Excavations: A City Cycle is the first collection of poetry from Jennifer R. Pournelle. Set in different cities over fifteen years of peace and war, the collection explores the hidden similarities of these locations' seemingly different landscapes and cultures. She begins in Vienna with the destruction of Saint Michael's Square, then to a reunified Berlin, and from there to the Spanish influenced San Diego, ending in the midst of the religious conflicts of Baghdad. Through vivid explorations of place, Pournelle's narratives bring to the surface defining historical events from these sites and their host cultures as the poems reveal how events rooted in these locations ripple outward to affect the world beyond. A career soldier turned environmental anthropologist and archeologist, Pournelle is deeply attuned to visions of loss and destruction as well as the promise of rebirth and rediscovery. Her poems voice her individual experiences abroad as she sifts--literally and metaphorically--through layers of turbulent history and harsh present circumstances in search of some small promise of future recovery for all that has been lost.

Standing over two graves, Rigoberto GonzAlez studies the names "Ramon" and "MarIa" under the family name "GonzAlez." "She was MarIa Carrillo, not MarIa GonzAlez," he thinks. His grandmother is missing. So begins GonzAlez's memoir, a journey to recover a more complete picture of his grandmother, who raised him following his mother's death. GonzAlez travels to his abuela's birthplace, MichoacAn, Mexico, and along the way recovers his memories of a past he had tried to leave behind. A complex woman who was forced to take on maternal roles and suffered years of abuse, his grandmother simultaneously resisted traditional gender roles; she was kind yet unaffectionate, and she kept many secrets in a crowded household with little personal space. Sifting through family histories and anecdotes, GonzAlez pieces together the puzzling life story of a woman who was present in her grandson's life yet absent during his emotional journey as a young man discovering his sexuality and planning his escape from a toxic and abusive environment. From fragments of memory and story, GonzAlez ultimately creates a portrait of an unconventional yet memorable grandmother, a hard-working Indigenous Mexican woman who remained an enigma while she was alive. A grandmother, he shows, is more than what her descendants remember; she is also all that has been forgotten or never known. Through this candid exploration of his own family, GonzAlez explores how we learn to remember and honor those we've lost.

In the grim reality of Southern California's grape fields, even the sun is a dark spot. For the migrant grape pickers in Crossing Vines, Rigoberto Gonzalez's novel that spans a single workday, the sun is a constant, malevolent force. The characters endure back-breaking, monotonous work as they succumb to the whims of their corrupt bosses. Each minute the sun rises higher in the sky is an eternity.The textures, smells, sights, and emotions of their daily existences engulf the lives of the Mexican laborers. Scarce drinking water, sweltering heat, splintered fingers, contempt for the job, and violence toward one another compose their unflinchingly dark world. In Gonzalez's brutally honest story, the characters are compelled forward mercilessly by the rising crisis that envelops their interconnected stories. This uncompromisingly thought-provoking tale gives names and faces to the anonymous agricultural laborers, whose lives are like the tangled vines of the fruits of their labor. Not since Tomas Rivera's . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him has a novel converged on the lives of migrant workers so profoundly. Like Rivera, Gonzalez employs nostalgia for Mexican tradition as he looks at the family feuds, economic injustices, and racism prevalent in the migrant worker experience.