Lucky Creatures
ByPublisher Description
Winner of the inaugural 2024 Sarabande Prize in the Essay, selected by Alexander Chee
A humorous and endearing debut about migration, queerness and the transnational experience for readers of Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness
Lucky Creatures is a bold and playful essay collection exploring identity, displacement, and the complexities of immigrant life. Through the author’s experience as a Filipino immigrant in New Zealand, Lucky Creatures delves into the vibrancy of his home and the thriving Filipino community in rural Hawke’s Bay, his family’s struggles with systemic and structural racism, and his personal journey of coming out as queer while grappling with the desire for a child. Drawing from the creatures of Filipino folktales and New Zealand fauna, Lucky Creatures reflects on the intersections of culture, colonization, and self-discovery, answering every immigrant’s question: "Was the move worth it?" With humor, wit, and grace, this book offers an unforgettable exploration of life as a queer, Brown, transnational hybrid.
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About Joseph Trinidad
Joseph Trinidad is a Filipino writer who lives in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington. His work has been featured in Landfall, North & South, Te Papa, The Spinoff, Turbine | Kapohau, and Migrant Zine Collective. He is the winner of the 2023 Adam Foundation Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2023 Asian Ink from Playmarket.
Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic, and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, T Magazine, Slate, Vulture, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.
Other books by Alexander Chee
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