Adolescence, Secondhand by Francisco Delgado
Adolescence, Secondhand by Francisco Delgado
Introduction by Craig Santos Perez
In Adolescence, Secondhand, Francisco Delgado offers flashes of boyhood through a subtle dissection of class, race, and the failure of American suburban dreams. Houses burn and firecrackers pop while children navigate the ever-present violences that float within their lives. The writing is succinct and fantastical -- Delgado poignantly renders a world of ache, wonder, and longing onto the page.
Both stumbling and sure, Delgado's narrator Chris strives to reconcile a cultural menagerie of TV shows and wrestling heroes with the blurred reality of friendship, family, and self. These stories are tightly crafted and quietly crushing: within them, we join Chris and bear witness to a multitude of griefs, and the joys hidden and discovered in their core.
About the Book
Paperback chapbook, 55 pages
Release date: November 25th 2018
Cover Design: Peter Barnfather
Praise for Adolescence, Secondhand
"Francisco Delgado renders these characters with nuance and care, paints the settings with striking descriptions, and voices the dialogue and internal monologues with convincing inflections...Delgado is a deft storyteller who values sensitivity, humor, and grace. This chapbook is a fresh and welcome addition to the traditions of Pacific Islander, Native American, and Asian American literatures."
— Craig Santos Perez, author of from unincorporated territory [guma']
"Francisco Delgado's Adolescence, Secondhand is brilliant and lyrical, a deeply moving portrait of youth and family. This is some of the best compressed, understated fiction I've read in a long time."
— Brandon Hobson, author of Where the Dead Sit Talking
"Delgado’s chapbook offers a challenging blend of fiction and non-fiction, with stories that are deeply personal yet experimental and imaginative. Adolescence, Secondhand mixes styles with the realness of Delgado’s mixed heritage characters who sift through life in shades of difference: poverty, brownness, masculinity, religion, sexuality. His energetic prose dances into focus, then sticks in the mind, pinning us to inescapably human characters who take life’s hand-me-downs and wrestle them into something new."
— Kawika Guillermo, author of Stamped: an anti-travel novel
An Excerpt
about the author
Francisco Delgado is an Assistant Professor in English at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY). He lives in Queens with his wife, Roseanne, and their son, Riordan. His creative work has appeared in such places as Glimmer Train, Pithead Chapel, and Side B Magazine. Adolescence, Secondhand is his first chapbook.
Read our interview with Francisco here!
