Access Today Gordo Created By Jaime Cortez Accessible Through Ebook

recommend this collection of intertwining short stories about rural Latinx people in California, These types of stories are rare, and I enjoyed all of them, They're childish with adult themes and not obnoxiously cringe, A funny, sad, touching series of connected stories about a fat, gay, Mexican kid growing up in a migrant farm housing community.
Reminded me a little of Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, in that it finds the humanity, heartache and humor in lives filled with hardship.
I picked this up at the library just because of the cover art and jacket description, A few chapters in, I realized it wasnt quite what I thought and wasnt sure about it, By the end I was surprised the stories had finished so abruptly and wished there were more, My only wish is that the stories of Raymundo and the Pardos had been more woven into Gordos story maybe I missed it, but I was waiting for the main characters to appear and was disappointed when they never met.
Highly recommend. I don't think I'll ever rate a short story collection five because I think it's nearimpossible for me to like every or almost every story in one, but this one came close.
The first couple of stories were eh, the middle ones were Great, and the last few were good.
Set in a migrant workers community this collection of short stories follows El Gordo, a young fat queer boy coming of age in thes.
I have loved a lot of short story collections this year but El Gordo touched at the inner queer Lupita navigating understanding her place in the world and her family.
Though it's a short story collection it often, for me, read like a novel and that just might be because similar to Junot Diaz and his recurring character Junoir, El Gordo is a reappearing character throughout the collection which doesn't just focus on him but on meditations of queerness, religion, toxic masculinity, fatphobia, homophobia and coming of age within a Latinx community.


There was so much I loved about this collection but again I go back to the connection I felt with El Gordo.
How in the first story he and his cousins/friends navigate the meaning/power of a Christian ceremony with a donut or later when he's part of an escape plan his Mother has concocted to free their nextdoor neighbor who is trapped in a queer abusive relationship.


El Gordo's appearance throughout each story collection felt like being a child and overhearing my elders tell stories.
To me, its a testament to the power of Latinx story telling and easily one of my favorite books of the year.
If I could add one book to the “American Literary cannon”, it would be this one, This is one of those rare short story collections in which every story is at least good, usually great.
The interweaving is precise and delicate, so that after reading I felt an intimacy with Gordos narrative without feeling like the continuity between stories was overkill.
The voice here is distinct, and I love the way that Cortez refused to “switch” between a youth/vernacular register and a more “authoritative” one they are as integrated as the stories themselves to the larger story of Gordos life.
Real Rating:.of five

sitelinkANPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR!

FINALIST FOR sitelinkTHEth LAMMY AWARDampmdash:BEST GAY FICTION! Winners announcedJune.


I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS, THANK YOU.

My : I'm always down for a story collection! This one is set in a world I liked the minute I landed in it, the Mexican American vibrant loud exuberant overthetop everybody knows where you are, where you came from, and what to expect from you so watch it, FIESTA.
Living in Mercedes, Texas, in the Sixties, I was The White Kid in my elementary school, and the Mexican American family who lived and worked on my greataunt's place in Progreso were, well, welcoming.
A little redheaded boy at the table Okay, here's a tortilla, eat hearty, This was very much NOT to my mother's taste and she snatched me outta there to Austin by decade's end.
I missed it. And when I got this collection of stories, I thought, yeah this works, I'm ready for a trip that far past the whitewater rapids of Memory!

I've used the timehonored eight years and counting! sitelinkBryce Method over at my blog: short impressions with individual ratings for the stories so as to organize my thoughts and feelings, while hopefully allowing you to reach your own conclusions.
These are excellent stories, about people the Haves aren't acquainted with, in all their flawed reality and aspiring joy.
I'm not normally a fan of short stories, but these stories each connected to each other in a way that felt more like reading a memoir or a description.
The stories are of the children of migrant families and their everyday lives and community traditions, It is set mostly in the's and describes a more innocent time, in some ways, If Everybody is Kung Fu Fighting resonates with you, you'll enjoy this book, I thought it was a lovely read and I only hope there are more stories to come,

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book, Captivating stories about life in migrant labor camps in central California told by Jaime Cortez as experienced by his tenyearold self.
Fascinating! They really take you inside another world that is intensely harsh and human, I loved this collection of short stories about a MexicanAmerican young boy and his immigrant family making a go of it in Watsonville, California.
Of course, the young boy has a nickname and that nickname is Gordo which he doesn't necessary love but embraces because what choice does he really have.
If you grew up in thes ands, you will appreciate the language, the references, and the generally different lifestyle to which we have now become accustomed.
These are the stories of the working class, the queer community, and the immigrant people upon whom this country relies so heavily.
It bears repeating that I loved this book, It felt like home. Easy to read, funny, emotional, painful, compelling collection of short stories about childhood, adolescence, migrant worker communities, family, the divide between fitting in and standing out, the divide between adult and child, the divide between living and dead, the divide between love and violence, and geographical borders.
Most stories are narrated by Gordo, a child who sees the world with curiosity and through the lenses of his peers, elders, and media.
I especially liked the stories The Jesus Donut, Alex, and The Problem of Style, and can easily imagine myself rereading them soon and sharing with friends.
FIRST FIVESTAR BOOK FOR

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for the ARC,

My man Jaime Cortez BODIED this collection of short stories like a luchador coming down off the top rope for a body slam.
This collection has everything you could want from a short story collection: the ineffable balance between text and subtext, the surprising yet inevitable ending, and characters of flesh and bone and blood and marrow and the fine baby hairs curling at their temples, or so it seemed to me, so vivid and corporeal.
The interconnectedness of these stories elevated the entire collection as well, allowing us to weave in and out of character arcs as they triumph or reach piques of mercy trying.


What truly impressed me as if I haven't hyped this enough is the way that the author captures the perspective of a child.
So many modern books fail at this book, writing children seen from the adult view, or trying to rewrite their own childhood in curdled nostalgia or vapid naiveté.
The dialogue between the children is sharp, accompanied by the inconsistent strands of logic that consume a child's mind before fleeing to make room for a new thought.
Our titular character, Gordo, is a delight, large yet tender, gay yet feeling the urge to appease the masculine demands around him, a thoughtful boy who is still in awe of the sharptongued children.
The rest of the ragtag band of children are fantastic, as is the worker's camp setting, a land and time unknown to me that still asserts itself as deeply familiar.


Listen to full reviews at sitelink buzzsprout. com/. Set in and around a predominantly Mexican migrant workers camp ins Watsonville, California, Cortezs stories are filled with so much love for the characters who inhabit them.
Cortez is unflinching in his portrayals of violence and threat, and stillno matter how tragic their backstories or dire their current circumstances, he holds his cast in perfect balance, allowing levity and humor to always be in focus.
Cortez writes about the dramas of everyday life with the pitchperfect tone and tempo of a master storyteller.
I loved getting a peak into a world about which I know embarrassingly little and found myself instantly enamored of his stories' guileless narrators.
I'm pretty sure Gordo is going to be considered a timeless classic, so you should definitely read it as soon as you're able! Id give the first half about.
stars, and the second half about,. ESPECIALLY the chapter about Alex! That was riveting and unputdownable!!! I could have read a whole novel about that situation!! A collection of short stories centered around Gordo and his family's experience as migrant workers in the San Juan Bautista area and Watsonville, Ca.
The Goodread's description of the book describes it as "scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within".
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Steinbeck's work, Truly. Steinbeck was a Salinas native and he portrayed the lives of farmworkers with empathy and humility while shining a light on their treatment and living conditions in many of his books.
It's just. Steinbeck never lived the life of a migrant/farm worker, He was a close observer, but he didn't experience it firsthand, He didn't have the Salinas Valley soil caked on his hands and embedded deep in his

nails after working all day hunched over.
What I'm saying is, in some ways Jaime Cortez is more Steinbeck than Steinbeck when it comes to writing about the experiences of migrant/farm workers.
Cortez's Gordo is a collection of snapshots giving us Gordo and a view into what being fat, gay, son of Mexican migrants, living in California in the's means.


Excellent narration. Each story is solid on its own, If viewed as part of the whole we get to see parts including the underbelly of what being this kind of American means.
The poverty, the homesickness, the cultivation of the value of money and other American values, such as the veneration of the donut, family, being yourself, being American or not.


An ARC gently given by author/publisher via Netgalley, .stars

Add this to the list of wonderful short story collections ofMilk, Blood, Heat, Filthy Animals, and Afterparties also immediately come to mind

I fell in love with Gordo from the very first story.
The oddly relatable quirkiness of stories like Jesus Donut and Chorizo couldn't help but bring a smile to my face, and I loved reading about this slice of America not often represented in fiction.


While I very much enjoyed the tapestry of Watsonville painted in the second half of the collection, I definitely wanted more Gordocentered stories.
It was enlightening seeing how characters from earlier in the collection ended up later in life, but perhaps an alternating pattern of Gordocentered, not Gordocentered would have been more effective.
Or maybe Im just unfairly comparing it to Filthy Animals or Afterparties, and the structure of those collections

Either way, really enjoyed this! I liked this collection of snapshots into the life of a young, fat, queer son of Mexican migrants living in California in thes.
Jamie Cortez does a great job of showing how childhood bullying and binary gender roles enforce toxic masculinity and homophobia.
I didnt love this book because the main characters voice felt a bit passive and onenote to me.
I understand Gordo is a child and a child who is marginalized based on his social identities, but the narrative voice lacked a certain precision, power, and growth that I felt amazed by when I read sitelink Caucasia by Danzy Senna, for example.
Still, Im all for queer representation outside of the cis, fit, white male paradigm so kudos to Cortez for putting this collection out there and I hope more people continue to resonate with it.
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