One Day I'll Tell You the Things I've Seen - by Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez (Paperback)

About the Book

The stories in Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez's intimate conversational narrative take readers around the world, from the orchards of California to the cornfields of Iowa, from the neighborhoods of Madrid and Mexico City to the Asian shore of Istanbul.

Book Synopsis

A man waits to cross la línea, the U.S.-Mexico border, as a guard scrutinizes him from behind dark sunglasses. Two grown brothers living three thousand miles apart struggle to reconnect through the static of a bad phone connection. A young mother trying to adjust to small-town life in a new country tells her children about the border city where she grew up--the dances and parties and cruises along the boulevard. The stories in Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez's intimate conversational narrative take readers around the world, from the orchards of California to the cornfields of Iowa, from the neighborhoods of Madrid and Mexico City to the Asian shore of Istanbul. As the characters navigate borders and border crossings--both physical and psychological--they attempt to make sense of their increasingly complex memories and relationships.

Review Quotes

"[A] fine collection of stories. . . . Vaquera-Vásquez creates a world where we are all citizens, but none can completely escape his origins."
--Shelf Awareness

"Concise, emotionally acute stories for those interested in reading beyond their borders."
--Library Journal

"In this lovely yet visceral book, the triumphs and tragedies of Vaquera-Vásquez's characters consistently resonate with readers."
--Publishers Weekly

"These introspective stories are haunting . . . as easy to absorb and inhabit as our own."
--Booklist

"Vaquera-Vásquez's stories move their characters through time, space, countries, childhood, music, languages, and relationships only to find themselves where they began--changed, perhaps--but always still in motion."
--Waxwing

"With One Day I'll Tell You the Things I've Seen, Vaquera-Vásquez contributes a vital and lyrical voice to the Chicano literary canon as well as to the canon of twenty-first-century American literature."
--Concho River Review

"A beautiful book. It's like sitting around a table with your best friend over coffee, going through a box of photos, stopping at some images and recalling moments in life that made us who we are."--Daniel Chacón, author of Hotel Juárez: Stories, Rooms and Loops

"In One Day I'll Tell You the Things I've Seen, the border is as much a psychic and cosmic space as it is a place of social experience. Language functions on multiple levels--Spanish, English, street slang, and even text messaging--to give the collection and its characters depth far beyond words on the page."--Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, assistant professor of English at the University of New Mexico

"These stories are so aching and wise, full of pasts and futures and people we should have known better, full of love."--Junot Díaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her