Breathing, In Dust

Presenting a snapshot of California, this title offers a harrowing depiction of the drug abuse, poverty, and desperation that play out in the lives of a humble farming community in California's heartland - a region known mostly for its agricultural wealth, and less for the stark contradictions overshadowed by its Golden State image.

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This is a snapshot of California that never appears in the tourist brochures. From poet and performance artist Tim Z Hernandez comes a harrowing depiction of the drug abuse, poverty, and desperation that play out in the lives of a humble farming community in California's heartland - a region known mostly for its agricultural wealth, and less for the stark contradictions overshadowed by its Golden State image. Seventeen-year-old Tlaloc, whose namesake is the Aztec god of fertility as well as destruction, chronicles a gritty landscape of wrenching contrasts: the abundant 'breadbasket of the world' and its intensifying hopelessness; the daily grind of underpaid workers in a land of plenty; raw cucaracha lives and campesino dreams; love tragically gone awry in the shadow of sweetly aromatic blossoms. Tlaloc's world is populated by wetbacks, tweekers, white trash-myriad nameless nobodies who live, love, and loathe, unseen by the other half. Even as he navigates his closest relationships with caution, Tlaloc seeks his escape in writing, crafting haunting portraits of those around him and narrating their struggles with brutal, graphic honesty.