| Twin Time: Or, How Death Befell Me Contributor(s): Gonzalez Pena, Veronica (Author) |
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ISBN: 1584350482 ISBN-13: 9781584350484 Publisher: Semiotext(e) OUR PRICE: $13.46 Product Type: Paperback Published: October 2007 Annotation: ,.". as I poured my father's ashes into a big Ziploc bag, a little of my blood dripped in. I thought about how each cell has all of you fully inscribed in it, so that if I left those drops in there, it would be as if I were already dead too. I plunged in then, to try and get myself out, but it was all so sticky that I had to give up; when I pulled out my hand, parts of my father were stuck all over it ..." --from "twin time" Poetic, sensuous and witty, Veronica Gonzalez's debut novel unfolds like a fairy tale spanning the dusty hills of Los Angeles and the glittering nightlife of Mexico City. Raised in northeast LA by her widowed immigrant father, a baker, Mona has grown up believing her mother died minutes after her birth, and her twin brother was simply given away. Stifled by unnamable doubts as a child, when her father dies, Mona sets off on a quest to discover her long-lost twin brother. The journey takes he into the labyrinth of her own fabulations about her parents' lives, and a dreamy Mexico City that exists only as cultural imagination. In the process she encounters a band of Nordic men, her Chinese double, a lascivious giant, and a tribe of feral children. Gonzalez masterfully probes the oddness of Mona's interior world until it becomes a twisted parable for all kinds of displacement. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Series: Semiotext(e) Native Agents |
| Physical Information: 0.73" H x 6.06" W x 8.9" (0.86 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A young woman's fabulist search for her long-lost twin brother overturns all notions of motherhood, magic realism, and miscegenation. ... as I poured my father's ashes into a big Ziploc bag, a little of my blood dripped in. I thought about how each cell has all of you fully inscribed in it, so that if I left those drops in there, it would be as if I were already dead too. I plunged in then, to try and get myself out, but it was all so sticky that I had to give up; when I pulled out my hand, parts of my father were stuck all over it...--from Twin Time Witty, sarcastic, and sensuous, Twin Time: or, how death befell me tells the story of Mona, who, upon her father's death in Los Angeles, decides to set off in search of her long-lost twin brother, given away as an infant. With her father's ashes as a guide of dubious reliability, Mona embarks upon a quest that takes her into a forest where she's confronted by--among other beings--a band of Nordic men, her Chinese doppelganger, a lascivious giant, and a pack of feral children. Along the way Mona recounts her parents' past as she imagines it, a romantic tale of love and rescue set in a fabulist, idealized Mexico--a dreamy place that only vaguely resembles the harsh quotidian realities of the 1960s Mexico City her parents inhabited. When Mona finds her brother at last, she learns that he grew up in London with their mother--who had supposedly (or so Mona had been told) died in childbirth--and her parents' story is thrown into further disarray. By the end of the journey, all Mona's received ideas of home, motherhood, magic realism, and miscegenation have been overturned. Veronica Gonzalez is the coeditor of Juncture: 25 Very Good Stories and 12 Excellent Drawings and the founder of rockypoint Press, a series of artist-writer collaborations produced in association with 1301PE Gallery. Twin Time is her first novel. |
Contributor Bio(s): Pena, Veronica Gonzalez: - Veronica Gonzalez Pena is the author of twin time: or, how death befell me, which won the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize in 2007. She is also the founder of rockypoint Press, which produces a series of artist-writer collaborations. |