All They Will Call You: A Little Something for Everyone

February 10, 2017, by

Hernandez picSometimes things just come together. I was recently thinking about how I could make the Houston area more aware of Tim Z. Hernandez’s engaging new book, All They Will Call You, as I recently interviewed him about it for Origins Journal, and low and behold I get an email the other day from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program (which I am a part of) about how he is coming to UH’s Graduate Library for a brief talk and that he’ll be reading as part of the Gulf Coast Reading Series this Friday, 17, 7 pm. The talk, unfortunately, is primarily for students, but the the Gulf Coast reading and his book is for everyone. And by “everyone” I mean exactly that, since the book touches on such a variety of ideas that anyone who enjoys serious literary work or even just a good story will find it worthwhile.

For the politically and socially driven, Tim’s book deals with some of the realities of immigration, both for the immigrants and host country. Sound familiar to any current events? The book centers on the worst plane crash in California’s history—a crash that claimed the lives of twenty-eight Mexican deportees and four Americans (and was the focus of Woody Guthrie poem turned song)—and explores why these men and women came into the states, what they had to go through because of the United State’s immigration policies, and how they shared much in common with those who were already citizens here. Lines are blurred, definitions are questioned, and identities are examined.   Continue reading