RavePress Herald...artfully weaves the complexities of racialized characters not only in the military itself, but in a nation in which everyday life is influenced by its presence ... Farria, co-editor of The Maine Review, skillfully embodies multiple voices across generations, a real strength of the book’s narrative ... a thorny book, full of complicated characters who sometimes make questionable, even immoral, decisions, but who are also a product of the nation that reared them. They are driven primarily by love, but in a country where white supremacy, capitalism and violent power are ubiquitous, to where can love really drive? This seems to be a central unspoken question for the characters and the narrative overall ... Farria dexterously explores sexual fluidity, masculinity and the corporeality of intersecting identities, and does not shy away from imbuing his characters with their fair share of internalized and externalized misogyny, part of \'Black masculinity’s rigid confines of expression.\'
Juli Delgado Lopera
RaveLambda LiteraryDespite the devastation 2020 has wrought, one bright spot is the publication of some stellar queer literature. And \'stellar\' is a perfect word to describe Juli Delgado Lopera’s debut novel ... Funny, irreverent, and deeply moving with its pitch-perfect rendering of the kaleidoscopic emotionality of the character, Lopera proves to be a master of crafting and inhabiting Francisca’s voice–and her heart. The prose is also bilingual, in English and Spanish, a much-needed approach to writing about not only immigration but life itself in America. This country is a multi-lingual one, and it is past due that our literature reflects this ... While this is a story of reckoning with grief, there is plenty of sunshine to be found in these pages ... Dripping with sweat, hating, and loving the experience of being alive, feeling a heartbeat and another heartbeat and a rhythm in the world that pulses through your own blood and bones: this is the stuff of a great queer novel.
