front cover of The Book of Want
The Book of Want
A Novel
Daniel A. Olivas
University of Arizona Press, 2011
When Moses descended Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, he never could have foreseen how one family in Los Angeles in the early twenty-first century would struggle to live by them.

Conchita, a voluptuous, headstrong single woman of a certain age, sees nothing wrong with enjoying the company of handsome—and usually much younger—men . . . that is, until she encounters a widower with unusual gifts and begins to think about what she really wants out of life.

Julieta, Conchita’s younger sister, walks a more traditional path, but she and her husband each harbor secrets that could change their marriage and their lives forever. Their twin sons, both in college, struggle to find fulfillment. Mateo refuses to let anyone stand in the way of his happiness, while Rolando grapples with his sexuality and the family’s expectations. And from time to time, Belén, the family’s late matriarch, pays a visit to advise, scold, or cajole her hapless descendants.

A delightful family tapestry woven with the threads of all those whose lives are touched by Conchita, The Book of Want is an enchanting blend of social and magical realism that tells a charming story about what it means to be fully human.
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front cover of Cómo Salir con un Mexicano Volador
Cómo Salir con un Mexicano Volador
Relatos Nuevos y Escogidos
Daniel A. Olivas
University of Nevada Press, 2023
Cómo Salir con un Mexicano Volador es una colección de relatos derivados de las culturas Chicana y Mexicana, pero que abarca fascinantes mundos literarios de realismo mágico, cuentos de hadas, fábulas, y futuros fracturados. Los personajes se enfrentan—tanto directa como indirectamente—a cuestiones de moralidad, justicia, y autodeterminación.
     La colección se compone de los relatos favoritos de Daniel A. Olivas, previamente publicados, junto con dos nuevos relatos, uno distópico y otro mítico, que desafían la retórica y las políticas anti-inmigración de la administración Trump. Los lectores se encontrarán con un mundo lleno tanto de lo mágico como de lo cotidiano: un hombre con doce dedos que se encuentra a sí mismo en una cita mística con una mujer; Dios, que se aparece en forma de gallina raquítica; una mujer que lucha con valentía contra su maltratador; y dioses aztecas en busca de relevancia tras la conquista española—solo por nombrar algunos de los singulares personajes que pueblan estas páginas. El libro reúne algunos de los cuentos más extraños e inolvidables de Olivas, permitiendo a los lectores experimentar su muy distintiva, y muy Chicana, ficción.
 
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front cover of How to Date a Flying Mexican
How to Date a Flying Mexican
New and Collected Stories
Daniel A. Olivas
University of Nevada Press, 2022
How to Date a Flying Mexican is a collection of stories derived from Chicano and Mexican culture but ranging through fascinating literary worlds of magical realism, fairy tales, fables, and dystopian futures. Many of Daniel A. Olivas’s characters confront—both directly and obliquely— questions of morality, justice, and self-determination.

The collection is made up of Olivas’s favorite previously published stories, along with two new stories—one dystopian and the other magical— that challenge the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. How to Date a Flying Mexican draws together some of Olivas’s most unforgettable and strange tales, allowing readers to experience his very distinct, and very Chicano, fiction.
 
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front cover of The King of Lighting Fixtures
The King of Lighting Fixtures
Stories
Daniel A. Olivas
University of Arizona Press, 2017
Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils. The King of Lighting Fixtures paints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.”

The characters here represent all walks of L.A. life—from Satan’s reluctant Craigslist roommate to a young girl coping with trauma at her brother’s wake—and their tales ebb and flow among various styles, including magical realism, social realism, and speculative fiction. Like a jazz album, they glide and bop, tease and illuminate, sadden and hearten as they navigate effortlessly from meta to fabulist, from flash fiction to longer, more complex narratives.

These are literary sketches of a Los Angeles that will surprise, connect, and disrupt readers wherever they may live.
 
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front cover of My Chicano Heart
My Chicano Heart
New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions
Daniel A. Olivas
University of Nevada Press, 2024
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. Often infused with Olivas’s trademark humor, readers will delight in—and commiserate with—the lovestruck characters who populate these richly realized stories.

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.
 
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