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Stories
by Ruben Reyes
Book Reviewed by:An electrifying debut story collection about Central American identity that spans past, present, and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.
An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he's a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man.
In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans.
Blazing with heart, humor, and inimitable style, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.
Second-generation Salvadoran American writer Ruben Reyes Jr. employs science fiction and alternative history in his dozen varied stories about Latinx characters trying to connect with family and survive perilous situations....There is an elegiac tone to much of the book, but Reyes' playful approaches, including his blurring of genre lines, mostly temper any somberness...continued
Full Review
(768 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
In Ruben Reyes Jr.'s short story collection There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, speculative fiction is a way to rediscover the experiences of first- and second-generation Latinx immigrants. Alternative history might commemorate the devastating effects of genocide or alienation while at the same time offering imaginative escape from them. Other authors of speculative fiction, such as Zen Cho, Ken Liu, and Brenda Peynado, use similar strategies to shed fresh light on racism and migrants' sense of exile. We spotlight a few more examples below.
Babel by R.F. Kuang (2022) is a sweeping fantasy novel in which Robin Swift, an orphan, is taken from China to be educated at the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford. He and his best friends&#...
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Jamel Brinkley, author of Witness and A Lucky Man, finalist for the National Book Award
Ruben Reyes Jr. has announced himself here in impressive fashion. This wonderful debut collection displays a virtuosic fictional range, often in the realm of what some would call the speculative, but in any case the depth of emotion, the insight into the lives of immigrants, and the potency and warmth of the writing in each story will leave you saying, This is real. This is true. When you read There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, your mind will be sent in many thrilling directions, and it will be powerfully deepened.
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