Migrations
We are eager to start publicizing Migrations by Professor J.L. Torres, to be published by the Los Angeles Review of Books on June 1, 2021.
About the book:
A ‘sucio’ goes to an underground clinic for therapy to end his machista ways and is accidentally transitioned. Ex-gangbangers gone straight deal with a troubled, gifted son drawn to the gangsta lifestyle promoted by an emerging music called hip hop. Dead and stuck “between somewhere and nowhere,” Roberto Clemente, the great Puerto Rican baseball icon, soon confronts the reason for his predicament. These are a few of the characters in J.L. Torres’s second story collection, Migrations, the inaugural winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Prize.
These stories take us inside the lives of self-exiles, unhomed and unhinged people, estranged from loved ones, family, culture, and collective history. Despite the effects of colonization of the body and mind, Puerto Ricans have survived beyond geography and form an integral part of the American mosaic.
About the author:
J. L. Torres is the author of The Family Terrorist and Other Stories; a novel, The Accidental Native; and the collection of poetry, Boricua Passport. He has published stories and poems in numerous journals and magazines, including the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Eckleburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Las Americas Review, and the anthology Growing Up Latino. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Torres is a professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh. Born in Puerto Rico, raised in the South Bronx, he lives in Plattsburgh, New York.
