The Tombstone Race: Stories

by José Skinner

Overview

A teenager accused of homicide finds little support from his family or community. A woman in a conservative town must find ways to protect her gay brother from their militaristic mother. A graduate student discovers that his research has been stolen, probably by the same street gang he has been studying. A former police officer, fired for shooting a deranged man, patrols his own neighborhood. Set in places as diverse as Fort Sumner, Taos, Chimayó, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Clovis, the fourteen stories in The Tombstone Race explore the surprising connections and disjunctions between rich and poor, urban and rural, old and new, ugly and beautiful. Based in part on the author’s experiences as a Spanish/English interpreter in the criminal courts of New Mexico, Skinner’s stories navigate the state’s changing cultures with humor and heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826356284
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	525 KB

About the Author

José Skinner is the author of Flight and Other Stories, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the former director of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Texas–Pan American. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Editorial Reviews

"Skinner allows his characters to speak in a language that is evocative, unsentimental, and empirical."
—Pasatiempo

"These are New Mexico stories, but they belong to all of those who suffer in the hidden world of deprivation and desperation that much of America would rather not see. There is beauty in Skinner's world, but it is not the easy beauty of green summer days along a blue river, but the honesty of looking a desperate person in the eye and finding humanity there."
—Colorado Review

"New Mexico is fertile literary soil for José Skinner's second story collection, The Tombstone Race. The fourteen stories explore society through the lens of ethnicity, class, friendship, family conflict, and generational friction. Believable, quirky characters, young and old, inhabit the stories."
—Albuquerque Journal

"Skinner's stories are smart and colloquial, conflicted and comical. . . . He doesn't pull punches with roles and he allows the individuals he follows to roam outside the box of assumed roles."
—Austin American-Statesman

"José Skinner's long-awaited second collection measures up to, and indeed surpasses, his critically acclaimed debut Flight and Other Stories. . . . Such dazzling storytelling was worth the wait."
—Rigoberto González, NBC News Latino

"The authenticity of José Skinner's experiences as a Spanish/English interpreter in the courtrooms of the Southwest hit harder than an NFL linebacker."
—Latina

"With verisimilitude, compassion, and a surprising amount of nobility, Skinner navigates the mean streets of New Mexico with cunning and grace."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A rare and stunning collection. These are powerful and necessary stories that we've gone too long without, and now that Skinner has brought them to us in such shimmering prose and unflinching empathy, we are in his debt."
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This: A Novel and Corpus Christi: Stories

From the Publisher

2016-01-10
Fourteen heartfelt stories about the hardscrabble Latino experience in New Mexico. Like his contemporary Claire Vaye Watkins, Skinner (Flight and Other Stories, 2001, etc.) has a nuclear focus on a person's sense of self in the context of a physical place. He continues this style in these lovingly crafted short stories about the denizens of the desert Southwest. In "The Edge," young Osvaldo and his crew of homies are partying at the edge of the Rio Grande Gorge when one of them falls into the canyon. Another story, "Solidarity," bookends the male experience in a way. Two former campus radicals encounter each other during a job interview on campus only to discover how much old men change even while angry young men remain the same, often for good reasons. In "Looking Out," Skinner tackles the dangers of postmodern romanticism in depicting two young people talking about the sublime landscape around them. One asks the other, "If you woke up from your life, would you tell it as a beautiful dream, or as a nightmare?" If there's a consistent theme throughout the collection it's doubt in the face of one's authenticity. Dedicated student Danny Sanchez loses his computer in "Backing Up" only to wonder if he deliberately set himself up to be drawn into gang life. In "Clean," a junkie becomes so convinced of his own poisoned nature that, as his parole officer says, he just doesn't know when to quit. It's a photo album of desperate lives, but there's a lot of poetry in the writing, too. In "My Dealer, In Memoriam," a junkie considers his options after his dealer kicks it. "I'm going to have to start panhandling to scrape up enough change to score whatever filthy, stepped-on shit I can find on the street," he tells us, knowing the score. With verisimilitude, compassion, and a surprising amount of nobility, Skinner navigates the mean streets of New Mexico with cunning and grace.

Kirkus Reviews