Migrations

by J.L. Torres

In J. L. Torres’s second story collection Migrations, the inaugural winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Prize, 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 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.

192 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2021

About the author

J.L.Torres was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico, a town in the center of the main island. He grew up in the South Bronx and received all of his formal education in the States. Then, he returned to the island to find roots and material for his writing. After years teaching at the college level there, he returned to New York. Besides New York City, he has lived in Madrid, Chicago, Los Angeles, and in Barcelona on a Fulbright.

His work focuses on the diasporican experience—living in the inbetweeness that forms and informs the Puerto Rican experience. In the collection, The Family Terrorist and Other Stories,the novel, The Accidental Native , as well as his poetry collection, Boricua Passport, he aims to go beyond issues of identity, although these are central to that experience.

“Through my writing,” says Torres, “I am exploring what it means to live a life yearning for ‘belongingness’ at a time when you’re told nation and home are empty concepts, and you have no historical memory of what they ever meant.” He wants to explore what this means in a world becoming smaller and where geography cannot ground anything.

J.L.Torres graduated from Vassar College, double majoring in Hispanic Studies and Psychology. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. The Family Terrorist and Other Stories include some of the stories from his MFA thesis, Salchichon Soup.

He has freelanced for magazines and newspapers, was the Editor for the popular, but now defunct Salsa magazine, Latin NY. He also published a string of stories in small magazines. One of his stories was included in Growing Up Latino, a ground-breaking anthology published by Houghton-Mifflin.

While working on his doctorate, and learning to write critical essays, he channeled his creative writing efforts to poetry. To date, he has published poems in the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, the Americas Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bilingual Review, Connecticut Review, Tulane Review, Puerto del Sol, among others.

Currently, he focuses more on fiction and has published stories in various magazines, including the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Americas Review, and Reunion: the Dallas Review. In 2020, Luis Alberto Urrea selected his second short story collection, Migrations, the winner of the Tomas Rivera Book Prize. LARB Libros will release the collection on June 1, 2021. Presently, he’s working on a novella on the Puerto Rican icon, Roberto Clemente.

J.L.Torres is Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, where he teaches American literature, Latinx literatures, and Creative Writing. He was a co-founder and the Executive Editor of the Saranac Review besides the Co-Editor, along with Carmen H. Rivera, of Writing Off the Hyphen: New Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora.

He lives in Plattsburgh, New York—known to friends and relatives as “carajo county”—with his wife and two sons, a spirited Coton de Toulear called Moe-jo, and a lot of snow. He has no known hobbies, has never been in prison or any gangs, has never had quirky and funky jobs, and is notoriously inept with tools.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Praise from Yxta Maya Murray? Say no more, send me the file! Very few authors need to worry about getting my attention who have previously gotten hers.

The author's receipt of the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize is quite telling. As this isn't a Prize most of us will have encountered before, I'm going to reproduce the entire explanation offered at the LARB Books site (link is above):

The Tomás Rivera Book Prize is a unique partnership between the Los Angeles Review of Books and UC Riverside. Open to any author writing in English about the Chicanx/Latinx experience, the Rivera Book Prize is committed to the discovery and fostering of extraordinary writing by a first-time or early career author whose work examines the long and varied contributions of Chicanx/Latinx in the US. The Rivera Book Prize aims to provide a platform that showcases the emerging literary talent of the Chicanx/Latinx community, to cultivate the next generation of Chicanx/Latinx writers, and to continue the rich literary memory of Tomás Rivera, Chicano author, poet, activist, and educator. Known for his seminal collection of stories, …and the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Rivera was the first Latino Chancellor of the UC system and a champion of higher education and social justice. The Rivera Book Prize honors his legacy and his belief in the power of education, activism, and stories to change lives.

Very worthy goals, ones I'm happy to support. And as a big bonus, I found it easy and fun to do so here.

The story-by-story summaries live at my blog.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Migrations’ is a collection of short stories based in Puerto Rico and with Puerto Ricans living in the US. On the cover is a picture of a ’52 Cadillac El Dorado crossing the sea, like a car advertisement from a bygone era. The El Dorado is the focus of the first story “Mint Condition”, Jim’s pride and joy, when he passes away, his widow hopes to sell the car for a small fortune but learns its value is much less than she expected as it was in far from mint condition. The second story is a bizarre story entitled “Sucio”, a ‘Sucio’ being a guy “who couldn’t keep his junk from getting him into trouble.”, In this story, told strangely in the second person, the guy loses his junk in a strange operation accidentally transitioning him and messing with his sucio-mind something terrible. There is a classic American car in that story, too, a ’68 Cherry Red Pontiac GTO. The collection isn’t just about human migrations, one story is about the Puerto Rican Coqui, a small but noisy frog disrupting the fragile ecosystem of Hawaii. The Puerto Rican baseball legend, Roberto Clemente also features in one story, as a rookie he faces prejudice on two accounts being black and being Spanish-speaking. I felt some of the stories weren’t adequately finished, the author started strong and then the ideas fizzled out towards the end. Also as a non-Spanish speaker, I found the use of many Spanish terms like tia, abuelita etc… to be confusing. My favorite story was “Go Make Some Fire” set in the early 20th Century, where children from the sugar plantations of Puerto Rico are taken to America with the promise of being educated, but there they find themselves exploited to work in farms and factories alongside Native Americans. This was interesting being the first book I’ve read focused on Puerto Ricans but I was slightly disappointed with the execution of the stories.

Thanks to NetGalley and LARB Libros for a free eARC in return for an honest review.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

J.L. Torres' Migrations takes readers on a series of unexpected journeys, almost all grounded in Puerto Rico or other parts of the Caribbean. Grounded—but from that point they sail in improbable directions. There's the man who receives unasked-for sex change surgery, the fed-up granny explaining why she "went wild" on spring vacation, and the deceased Roberto Clemente wrestling with his own identity.

Each story has enough meat and enough surprises to it that Migrations is one of those titles best read a little at a time so the details don't pile up in one another. Read a story, sit with it a bit, observe the way conceptual tendrils spin out, simultaneously pulling you into the world of that story and into your own life. Understanding a bit of Spanish helps, but *not* understanding is also a valid kind of experience with lessons for us all.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

[Barbara Tsipouras · Rating 2 out of 5]

The good writing style and the personal experience promised good stories about migration, but I must admit that I was disappointed. The stories ranged from pointless, to depressing, to fantasy. the connections between the various characters are not clear enough.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly know nothing about Puerto Rico, so really loved the deep sense of place that threaded through these stories, even the ones set in the diaspora. It definitely made me keen to check out longer form work by the author.

Although some of the stories were a bit weird (Sucio), I guess it's to be expected from shorts!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC copy.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bailed on this #netgalley pick at 75%. Finished 8/11 short stories & can‘t bring myself to read the rest.

The stories are about the Puerto Rican experience. Learned some PR history but the Puerto Ricans in this book are crass, physically violent in self-expression, angry and bitter. Weird dissonance in the smooth and gentle narrative voice and inner thoughts of the characters and then a violent eruption of emotion, from gesturing vulgarly to striking someone. Yet none of the outward actions seemed to have a lead-up in the interiority of the character's thoughts. Though maybe understandable given the external circumstances (a character was dismissed, put-down), what we know of the character wouldn't lead us to understand that the response to the stimuli would be physical.

Also there's just plain weirdness - like the story where a guy accidentally undergoes a sex change operation. What? Just altogether strange and in the end I couldn't embark on another story where I was trying to make sense of the motivations and responses to stimuli.

Adding a star for the insight to Puerto Rican history and the relationship with mainland USA.

[KtotheC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories representing the diverse experience of people with connections to Puerto Rico - whether they have roots there but live elsewhere, have always lived there or have come to call it home.

These stories focus on a wide range of topics, one centres on loss and is one of the more relatable stories of the collection. Another sets out an outlandish situation but deals with it in a realistic way. They all question identity and how an individual feels in the wider world.

A solid collection.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

[Ayesalya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writyng style is really excellent, this movie is extraordinary excellent.