The Boy Kingdom / El Reino de Los Varones - (Raised Voices) by Achy Obejas (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month comes another brilliant bilingual poetry collection by Achy Obejas--a meditation on being a queer mom to two sons

These 44 prose poems, artful yet accessible, presented in both Spanish and English versions, immerse us in the boy kingdom that Achy Obejas inhabits with her two sons. They move from the wild and divine spirit of boyhood to the everyday rhythms of family life--mac'n'cheese, television, sick days home from school.

Achy carries multiple identities: she is Cuban American, lesbian, and Jewish. She captures the universality of motherhood while also illuminating the uniqueness of her queer, multilingual, multicultural family: the way her elder son looks as her as if she's "dancing with the dead" when she speaks Spanish; the way her boys prefer mac'n'cheese to tostones; the day her elder son comes home from school disquieted, then finally spills it: "A couple of boys yelled at him: Your moms are queer!"

The collection is divided into four parts. The first part focuses primarily on Achy's sons, and subsequent parts branch out into stories of her parents, her roots in Cuba, and her divorce.

Review Quotes

"Heart-bending . . . Unreel[s] like a snippet of cinema joining to tell one of our most traditionally elusive stories--the tenacious bond between mothers and sons."
--Patricia Smith, author of Blood Dazzler

"Shows us how our families, our lovers, and our histories forever reshape our devotions."
--Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences

"Obejas unravels the myth of family kingdoms. . . . What a gift she has given us!"
--Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Some of the Light

"Mind-boggling, unpredictable, heart-quaking."
--Rachel Galvin, author of Uteropia

"A union of poems that are unyielding in their fierce honesty and transparent in their raw tenderness."
--Emily Hooper Lansana, artistic director, SOL Collective: Storytelling by Women of Color

About the Author

Achy Obejas is a Cuban American writer, translator, and activist whose work focuses on personal and national identity. Her creative work has won two Lambda Awards and her journalism has won a shared Pulitzer Prize. A native of Havana, she currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.