Taína

A uniquely dark, coming-of-age novel rife with urban magical realism, love, and redemption, from the author of Bodega Dreams When Julio, a teenager living in Spanish Harlem, hears that Taina, a pregnant fifteen-year-old from his high school claims to be a virgin, he decides to believe her. Julio has a history of strange visions and his blind and unrequited love for Taina will unleash a whirlpool of emotions that will bring him to question his hard-working Puerto Rican mother and his communist Ecuadorian father, his beliefs and even the building blocks of modern science (after seeing the conception of Taina's baby as a revolution in nature). After meeting Taína's uncle, "El Vejigante", an ex-con with a dark past, he accepts his proposal to support her during her pregnancy and becomes entangled in a web of crime that, while taking him closer to Taína, ultimately reveals a family secret that will not leave him unscathed.

Ernesto Quiñónez nació en Ecuador, pero llego a la ciudad de Nueva York a los dieciocho meses con su madre puertorriqueña, su padre ecuatoriano, y sus cuatro hermanos. Creció en El Barrio, el vecindario latino ubicado en Harlem. Actualmente es profesor en la universidad de Cornell, donde enseña escritura narrativa. Quiñónez también es el autor de El vendedor de sueños y Chango's Fire.