Hot off the University of Wisconsin Presses is J.A. Marzan's The Bonjour Gene -- a story that revolves around the French-descended, Puerto Rican family called Bonjour. Each family member carries with him or her the legacy of the chronic promiscuity of every Bonjour male. Communities in both Puerto Rico and New York City (boroughs included) are also forced to accept the growing populations of illegitimate Bonjour children. Mothers fear their Bonjour child will unknowingly fall in love with another Bonjour. The anxiety of this rampant wantonness is reiterated throughout the book from beginning to end, so that there is no doubt in the reader's mind that the gene is that of licentiousness and irresponsible lust.
Read MoreThe pages of Lolita Hernandez's Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant ring with rhythmic industrial language intermeshed with the sorrows and bewilderment of Ms Hernandez as she bears witness to the events at the company. She tunes us in to the aging, the declining, and the death of Detroit's Cadillac Motor Car Company: "one orgasmic slam after another of fixtures and furniture into gondolas and c-five pans." We watch the destruction not only of Midwestern industry, but also of all the lives the plant is survived by as people prey like vultures on the remains of the closed facility, recovering metal scraps to sell.
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