Alejandro Gac-Artigas was born in October 22, 1988. He published his first short story in 1995
when he was a second grade student in Carrollton, Georgia. His poem "The Other Side of Town"
was selected to be published by the Literary Review of an American University, and he completed
Yo, Alejandro, his first book, in September 2000, a month before his 12th birth-day.
With a remarkable mastery of the language and with all the tenderness that only a child can
express, in Yo, Alejandro the author tells us his story as a young Latino boy in the United
States and his struggle for acceptance without losing his identity.
Year after year, step by step the author shows us the way that little by little brought him to
stand up firmly in his new country. His story takes us from laughs to tears, from dispair to
hope, defying our sense of right and wrong.
Magical, real, poetical, thrilling, joyful and sad, Yo, Alejandro comes to fill a gap in the
literature of our epoch, the story of a new generation in search of a place to build its future,
the radiography of a society through the incredible fight of a Latino Boy in his own voice, a
voice that gives voice to so many, a voice that breaks the silence to show the most terrible
wounds, the invisible wounds of the soul, a story that could happen in everyone's town.
Like all masterpieces, Yo, Alejandro, emerges from the sorrow with-out hate. Only the purity of
a child's voice, like the Little Prince or Anne Frank, can captivate your heart in such a way.
Yo, Alejandro represents a gust of fraich air in the literature of our times.
