And I'll Take Out Your Eyes

A Novel

De: A. M. Sosa

Narrado por: Christian Barillas

"An insultingly good debut" following a queer Chicano’s cannon-shot into adulthood amidst familial turmoil and the suffocating violence of Stockton, California in the early 2000s (Ruth Madievsky).

Cría cuervos y te sacaran los ojos: Raise crows and they’ll take out your eyes.

Since the age of seven, Christian has been under the thumb of a curse. He reads its dark signs everywhere: in his bedridden mother’s wilting plants; in his brother’s estrangement; in his father’s eager fists and glassy stare. He reads it in his nightmares, in Stockton’s soundtrack of sirens and gunshot. Above all, he reads the curse in the mirror, watching himself “turn” into the crow his father always predicted he’d become.

Maddened by the city’s heatwaves and his own unthinkable desires, often high and drunk, Christian rips through his neighborhood, desperate to escape not only the city but the monster of his pain. But even when he leaves, the curse follows. Can Christian ever be absolved? Or is he condemned to be consumed by the same violence as his father?

And I’ll Take Out Your Eyes is a defiant, shattering portrait of self-discovery in the face of violence, mental illness, and other dark inheritances. In a lyric, circuit-bending onslaught of ragers and laments, A. M. Sosa delivers a redemptive story—and an unforgettable debut.

Reseñas de la Crítica

A Publishers Lunch Buzz Book

"An insultingly good debut from a writer I'll follow forever. And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is
a poetic gut punch that heals just as much as it haunts."
—Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy

"Poetic, defiant, and unflinching, And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is incendiary from the opening paragraph, and never relents. A.M. Sosa is a young writer to watch."—Jonathan Evison, author of Lawn Boy and The Heart of Winter

“And I’ll Take Out Your Eyes introduces an urgent new voice that fearlessly captures a coming-of-age shaped by fury and fear. At once brutal, funny, harrowing, and tender, A.M. Sosa’s searing debut reminds us why fiction still matters, why it can be lifesaving.”—Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Likes and Madeleine Is Sleeping

"And I'll Take Out Your Eyes is a kaleidoscopic wonder of a debut. Never boring, A.M. Sosa seems somehow capable of pulling off any form or point of view. Any sentence might be as explosive, as tender, as breathless, as surprising as life. And there is so much life in this book. If nothing else, it is rare to find a novel as alive as this one. Sosa has arrived with a cannon shot."—Matthew Salesses, author of Craft in the Real World and The Sense of Wonder