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FICTION / LATINO INTEREST
“In
The Bonjour Gene
, poet and word man Julio Marzán displays the kind
of wit and intellectual verve rarely seen in contemporary literature. With
every well-crafted line and insight (about the mercurial nature of family
life and identity) accumulating to wonderful effect, this is a book that will
surely entertain and enlighten its readers.”
—Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize–
winning author of
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Approaching midlife, after rising to comfortable suburban life, Edgar Bonjour
becomes involved with a drug-trafficking Puerto Rican motorcycle gang from his
old neighborhood and is brought down by an affair with a woman in the gang.
News of his murder leads to introspection among other members of the Puerto
Rican Bonjour clan, all descended from three now nameless French brothers
remembered only by their surname. Though extended generations of the Bon-
jours dispersed, some settling in New York, they remain connected by the shared
lore of their ancestry, that starting with the three original Bonjour brothers—all
rampant adulterers—every descendent Bonjour male carries a reckless, woman-
izing gene.
Interconnected like the Bonjour family itself, this novel is a tale of unpredict-
able and unforgettable characters that transports readers to a plane where ethnic-
ity becomes universality.
J. A. Marzán
is a poet, fiction writer, and author of the landmark
The Spanish
American Roots of William Carlos Williams
. His fiction has appeared in journals
including
The Kenyon Review
and the anthologies
Current from the Dancing River
and
Iguana Dreams: New Latino Fiction
. A former poet laureate of Queens, New
York, he has published the books
Translations without Originals
and
Puerta de
Tierra
as well as poems in, among others,
Parnassus
,
Ploughshares
,
Tin House
, and
Harper’s Magazine
.
FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
AUGUST
LC: 2004012827 PS
184 PP. 6 × 9
E-BOOK $12.95 T ISBN 978-0-299-20413-6
• 2004 CLOTH, UWP, 978-0-299-20410-5
“In a style that combines poetic
nuances with humorous touches,
Marzán adds a new dimension to our
understanding of what it is to be a
Latino today. The ‘Bonjour gene’ he
evokes is a positive gene, a gene on
the verge of a new day.”
—Rosario Ferré, author of
The House
on the Lagoon
Of re l at ed int e re s t
David Leddick
“In this memoir, writer, collector, and
raconteur David Leddick not only remi-
nisces about his life and loves, but gives us
a vivid, important sense of what it means
to be a gay man who has lived a full and
happy life over the past seven decades.”
—Michael Bronski, Harvard University
PUBLISHED JUNE 2013
LC: 2012043338 PS 144 PP. 5 ½ × 8 ¼
E-BOOK $16.95 T ISBN 978-0-299-29273-7
Terrace Books
