Book launch at Vroman’s Bookstore on August 14 for MY CHICANO HEART, a new story collection by Daniel A. Olivas

VROMAN'S BOOKSTORE PRESENTS DANIEL A. OLIVAS,

IN CONVERSATION WITH STEPHANIE YU, DISCUSSES

MY CHICANO HEART

DATE: AUGUST 14, 2024

TIME: 7:00 P.M.

DETAILS AT VROMAN’S WEBSITE

My Chicano Heart is a collection of author Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published tales about love, along with five new stories, that explore the complex, mysterious, and occasionally absurd machinations of people who simply want to be appreciated and treasured. Readers will encounter characters who scheme, search, and flail in settings that are sometimes fantastical and other times mundane: a man who literally gives his heart to his wife who keeps it beating safely in a wooden box; a woman who takes a long-planned trip through New Mexico but, mysteriously, without the company of her true love; a lonely man who gains a remarkably compatible roommate who may or may not be real—just to name a few of the memorable and often haunting characters who fill these pages. Olivas’s richly realized stories are frequently infused with his trademark humor, and readers will delight in—and commiserate with—his lovestruck characters. 

Each story is drawn from Olivas’s nearly twenty-five years of experience writing fiction deeply steeped in Chicano and Mexican culture. Some of the stories are fanciful and full of magic, while others are more realistic, and still others border on noir. All touch upon that most ephemeral and confounding of human emotions: love in all its wondrous forms.

Praise for My Chicano Heart

“Olivas has done it again. In this collection of stories from University of Nevada Press, Olivas has captured the essence of the Southwestern, supernatural story. Each story leads the reader down a darkening path, yet we go completely of our own volition just to see what he will show us. Nothing is free, yet like his hapless characters, we always agree to the bargain.”
     —Kathleen Alcalá, author of Treasures in Heaven: A Novel

“These stories are about love, heartbreak, magic, death and other oddities of our Chicano lives, as only Olivas’s imagination can tell them. I am tempted to say this is one of the most innovative and whimsical collections I have read in years, but then I remember the last one that I read that was just as good was also a collection of stories by Olivas. He is without a doubt one of the master storytellers of our time. A Chicano man who literally gives his heart away to his partner, an arrogant weatherman with Chicano-sized problems, a mystical encounter with Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, these fictions are fun, fast, and frankly fantastic.”
     —Daniel Chacón, author of The Cholo Tree

“Daniel A. Olivas has written fascinating fantastical scenarios in My Chicano Heart, but always with very recognizable human settings and issues. This collection is a portrait of Latinx/Chicana/o life as it is lived today, and there is true voz here that is jammed with feeling and passion. It’s as if all of Olivas’s character’s souls are embattled.” 
     —Yxta Maya Murray, author of The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could

“Love, while universal, is experienced differently from one culture to another. These stories explore its mutations, sometimes in phantasmagorical ways. But they don’t stop with love, delving into other emotions with equal bewilderment. Daniel Olivas is a treasure.”
     —Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College, coauthor of Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook

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If you can’t make the Vroman’s Bookstore event, visit my events page for other opportunities including a wonderful WORDTheatre live event on August 9 where actors will perform stories from my new collection as well as stories by Luis Rodriguez and Estella González!