Dagoberto Gilb’s latest collection of stories, New Testaments, delves deep into the contemporary Chicanx experience. Among this treasure trove of short fiction are “Prima,” a tale of an impromptu family reunion, and "Answer," a love story between a young man and an older, married woman. These works were published in Alta Journal’s Issues 26 and 11, respectively—and are just two of the reasons we’re especially excited about this book. Gilb joins Alta Live for a sit-down with Alta’s editorial director, Blaise Zerega, to discuss his extraordinary body of work and signature style, examine the growing emergence of Chicanx literary voices, and answer our questions. Join us for an intimate conversation with one of the West’s most exciting authors.

About the guest:

Dagoberto Gilb is the author of 11 books, including his two most recent, New Testaments and A Passing West. Others are The Magic of Blood, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, Woodcuts of Women, Gritos, The Flowers, and Before the End, After the Beginning. Among his honors are the PEN/Hemingway Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Whiting Writers Award. His work has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner Awards and has been honored several times in Texas as a proud part of its literary tradition. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Best American Essays, and O’Henry Prize Stories, and much of it has been widely reprinted in textbooks and anthologies. He is the founder of Huizache, a groundbreaking literary magazine that features Latino writing. Born and raised in Los Angeles by his Mexican mother, he lives in both Austin and Mexico City.

About the book:

In New Testaments: Stories, Dagoberto Gilb’s latest cast of characters includes a young family whose exposure to a mysterious cloud of gas alters their lives forever; a high school dropout whose choice to learn the ways of the world from the adults at work leads him into a dangerous dalliance; a former high-rise carpenter who meets up with an eager old flame; an aging Chicano, living alone, whose children watch over him for signs of decline; and more. Gilb’s distinct narrative voice offers his readers a warm welcome as he peels back the surface of everyday life to seamlessly guide us into realms of myth and fable.

Here are some notable quotes from today’s event:

  • On the title of New Testaments: “I actually did it because just recently I had somebody send me a reading group by Chicanos, and the guy wrote “New Testament Stories.” And I’m not writing from the Bible, dude, but, yes, they are new testaments. They are new statements—because I am trying. What the stories are trying to do is move away from stereotypes and clichés and all the dumb tropes, the dumbass tropes that we have lived with for 100 years. We’re not invading. We’re not gang members only. We’re not drug dealers only.”
  • On City Lights and literature of the West: “One of the great things I feel completely happy about is I chose City Lights, because that is our Notre-Dame or Chartres Cathedral of literature in the West. That’s the place to go. It’s all the things in my era, the Beats and Kerouac and Ginsberg. They’re East Coast guys, but they lived on the West Coast, and they loved the West Coast and the West. I read all of them.”
  • On nonfiction and fiction: “Nonfiction has great mysteries in it, and that’s what’s really great about nonfiction pieces—it captures the mystery of what’s really happening. But fiction, you get to tell bigger—I’d almost say theological—stuff.”

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.