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>>Assumption and Other Stories

ISBN: 1-931010-19-6
136 pp. | paper only | $12.00 

by Daniel Olivas

Daniel A. Olivas is a rising voice in Chicano fiction whose talents are showcased in this collection of eighteen remarkable short stories set in Southern California. He populates the urban landscapes of his stories with characters that mirror the complex and multi-faceted nature of class, gender, and ethnicity in modern Latino communities. In the suspenseful “Summertime,” the parents and grandmother of nine-year-old Jonathan Cohen-Ramírez are confronted with their greatest fears when a deranged white supremacist opens fire on a Jewish children’s day camp. Shifting effortlessly between pathos and wry comedy, Olivas is able through his character-driven stories to explore how a married couple deals with miscarriage, how a young lawyer explains her lesbian sexuality to her traditional parents, and how the staff and students of a Catholic school experience the suicide of a popular young priest amidst swirling rumors of his sexual improprieties. Olivas writes in a variety of styles, and the colorful characters and unusual situations addressed in Assumption and Other Stories reflect a community that defies easy categorization and stereotypes.

Daniel A. Olivas earned his B.A. in English literature from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of The Courtship of María Rivera Peña: A Novella (Silver Lake Publishing, 2000), and one of his short stories appeared in the recent anthology Fantasmas: Supernatural Stories by Mexican American Writers (Bilingual Press, 2001). His fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous other anthologies and in such literary journals as Exquisite Corpse, THEMA, The MacGuffin, and The Pacific Review. Olivas practices law in Los Angeles with the California Department of Justice and lives with his wife and son in the San Fernando Valley.