Proud Chicanos in Conversation Featuring Christopher David Rosales, Author of Word is Bone

The Latinx Identity Project

Hola, bienvenidos, and welcome to another episode of the Latinx Identity Project.

This is a podcast where we tell stories for us and by us. I am your host, Elsa Iris Reyes,

Today’s guest is Christopher David Rosales, a Chicano author and professor of Chicano & Latino Studies at California State University Long Beach. Join us as we dive into his latest novel, Word is Bone. Episodes like today’s are a reminder for why this podcast exists - it’s to uplift and promote our diverse perspectives and voices.

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Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
About our guest:
Christopher David Rosales, PhD, MFA is a Chicano novelist and short-story writer from Los Angeles. He is the author of three novels including Silence the Bird, Silence the Keeper (2015, Mixer Publishing) which won the Hispanic Scholarship Fund & McNamara Family Creative Arts Grant, Gods On the Lam (2017, Perpetual Motion Machine), and Word Is Bone (2019, Broken River Books), winner of the International Latino Book Award. His award-winning short stories have appeared in Both Sides: An Anthology of Border Noir (2020, Polis/Agora Books), among other anthologies, journals, and magazines in the U.S. and abroad.

Rosales is a Professor in Chicano & Latino Studies at California State University Long Beach.

WORD IS BONE

Winner of the International Latino Book Award.

1999. Ex-con June returns to Los Angeles to bury his father, and in the process brings violence and mayhem to everyone he encounters. Low-rent gangsters fight dogs and pistols shoot quiet through potato silencers, and at the center of this sweltering California Gothic and its surreal and colorful cast of characters is the love story of Kiddy and June, two wild young people separated by circumstance and time, trying not to love each other against their better instincts.

“Christopher Rosales’ writing in Word is Bone is so vibrant and dirty with street-level intimacy like a lot of hip-hop: think Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees” and Domino’s “Getto Jam.” These are stories from the stoops, laundromats, canals and alleyways, that show how a community weaves narrative webs to understand their own truths. So, here we go, here we go as the tune starts to bloom.” —Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat and water & power

Official Website: https://www.christopherrosales.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christopher.d.rosales

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisdrosales/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CDRosales

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Artwork and intro music by Emmanuel Reyes @trueloathing