What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood

"Well, he is a remarkable writer, both poet and memoirist. This book is just beautifully written. So yes, I think you have been missing out. But—if I can just put a little plug in here for the NBCC—the books that we consider are not nominated, and there’s no entry fees as there are for other significant awards, so that opens up our competition to the world of books in a way that other competitions are not. We read literally hundreds of books over the course of the year. Rigoberto González’s book was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. They’re a very good press, but they are not huge. So when we are looking for books, we keep an eye out and look for books that are not necessarily being reviewed everywhere, like Educated was. The fact that a book is lesser known is not going to stop us. Hopefully with these awards we remind people that there are a lot of great books out there that they might not be aware of. “The book is a window into a life that a lot of us know nothing about” A few years ago, before I was on the board, a collection of short stories won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction. It was from a tiny press called Lookout Books, which publishes two books a year. This was a collection of short stories, so it’s even more remarkable that it won the award for fiction. Gonzalez’s book is the story of growing up a Latino and gay in a very troubled family. His mother dies, his family deserts the family, and it’s a hard, hard life. It’s just a really remarkable story about his relationship with his father and, primarily, his brother, and about pulling away and finding a new life. It’s just beautifully written. The book is a window into a life that a lot of us know nothing about: going back and forth across the border, living in small towns, intrafamilial strife, and finally busting out and finding a bigger life. He becomes an academic and a poet but he feels this pull back home again to these small dusty towns where his brother still lives. It’s about the relationship between him and his brother, but it’s a coming of age story as well."