Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays

Gomez follows up High-Risk Homosexual with a triumphant and bracing account of growing up queer, poor, and Nicaraguan in Florida. In 10 dazzling essays that return again and again to his fear that his mother would find out he’s gay and disown him, Gomez details his immigrant family’s desperate attempts to keep the American dream from slipping out of their grasp. Gomez’s mother was a Nicaraguan refugee who tried to keep Gomez and his brother afloat by working as a barista at an airport Starbucks after their addict father abandoned them. With each attempt the family made to overcome debt and improve their lives, they were thwarted by cruel twists of fate—a home break-in, a friend’s betrayal that got Gomez expelled from high school, his mom’s stress-induced stroke—that set them back even further. Though Gomez graduated from college and earned an MFA, his economic struggles continued, forcing him to take menial jobs and turn occasional tricks while he wrote High-Risk Homosexual. Even as he offers a pitiless, self-aware view of life on the margins, Gomez remains funny, candid, and unfailingly stylish. This delivers a welcome jolt to the coming-of-age memoir formula. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Feb.)