Author on the Airwaves: Joe Jiménez

Jiménez chosen as July 2016’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media

Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Jiménez for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here.

Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media.

About the Author:

JOE JIMÉNEZ, a high school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, is the author of The Possibilities of Mud (Kóorima Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Silver Homeboy Flicka Illuminates the San Juan Courts at Dawn (Gertrude Press, 2012).

About his latest book, Bloodline

In his junior year, seventeen-year-old Abraham learns how to drive a stick shift. He falls in love for the first time. And he has been in three fights and suspended twice, all before Thanksgiving. His grandmother and her girlfriend, the ones who have raised him, fear for his life and the hard future that awaits him. “He needs a father,” his grandmother says. “He needs a man. I can’t do this, Becky. We can’t. Not on our own.”

Soon, his Uncle Claudio—the son with a fat police file who has hurt his mother so many times—is back in the house. Determined to make a man of his nephew, he takes the boy to the gym and shows him how to use free weights and become bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, Abraham’s feelings for his friend Ophelia grow, and she tries to understand why he fights. “This will end badly,” she warns. “Nothing good can come from this.”

At school, Abraham learns about genetics, and he wonders if people are born bad. Is it in their DNA? Was he born to punch and kick and scream and fight and destroy things because of the genes in his body? Is that what happened to his father? All he knows is that his father is dead and his mother is gone. In Joe Jiménez’s striking debut novel for teens, a young man struggles with his family’s refusal to talk about the violence that has plagued it and what it means to become a man. Does a boy need a father to become a good man?