Justin Torres

Literature lets us explore all kinds of scenarios, and in some cases, novels contemplate making a new family outside our family of origin.

We see this theme in Justin Torres' 2011 novel, We the Animals, which follows an unnamed narrator whose father is Puerto Rican and whose mother is white.

At the beginning of the book, he's six years old, roaming wild around his upstate New York hometown with his two older brothers.

The three boys move together like a pack, a three-torsoed beast.

So now I'm really curious.

Blackouts by Justin Torres won our Fiction Award two years ago.

And Justin was one of my professors my last year at UCLA.

That's right.

It's so good.

It's so good.

And we've already talked about Justin Torres a lot, so I will be more creative and do The Secret Lives of Church Ladies and stay on my short story train.

And just, like, if I could give Deesha Philia the world, I would.