On
Monday, Oct. 15,
on the last day of the observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, Crossed Genres
Publications of Somerville, Mass., releases Sabrina Vourvoulias’ novel,
“Ink,” a fictional look at what happens
when rhetoric about immigrants escalates to an institutionalized population
control system. (To read a portion of the first chapter and order on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ink-Sabrina-Vourvoulias/dp/0615657818/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350269229&sr=1-1&keywords=ink+by+sabrina+vourvoulias)
The near-future, dark speculative
novel opens as a biometric tattoo is approved for use to mark temporary
workers, permanent residents and citizens with recent immigration history -
collectively known as inks. This “chilling tale of American apartheid, and the power of
love, myth and community” (Reforma: The National Association to Promote
Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking) has its main characters grapple with ever-changing definitions of power, home
and community, and perceptions of “otherness” based on ethnicity, language,
class and inclusion.
Set in a fictional city and
small, rural town in the U.S. during a 10-year span, the novel is told in four
voices: a journalist; an “ink” who works in a local population control office;
an artist strongly tied to a specific piece of land; and a teenager whose
mother runs an inkatorium (a sanitarium-internment center opened in response to
public health concerns about inks). Vourvoulias, of Guatemalan-American descent
and the managing editor of Philadelphia’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, Al
Día, has described the characters as
“complicated
people in complicated times trying to live their lives as best they can. You
know, us.”
“Readers will be moved by this call for justice in the
future and the present.” (Publishers Weekly)
“The conflict driving the novel
will fill readers with dismay, seeing parallels between what has already taken
place—Japanese locked in concentration camps, narcos controlling swaths of
territory in Mexico, rednecks with power—and the novel’s permutations of
today’s ugly commonplaces.” (Michael Sedano, La Bloga)
“In Ink, Vourvoulias masterfully weaves
an increasingly complex parallel universe at once fantastical and eerily
familiar: a not-so-farfetched future world where myth and legend cohabit with
population control schemes, media cover-ups, and subcutaneous GPS trackers.” (Elianne Ramos, the vice chair of
Latinos in Social Media – LATISM)
Ink’s
publication is part of Crossed Genres’ commitment to bringing new and
underrepresented voices into fiction. CG’s list of publications include Daniel
José Older’s “Salsa Nocturna;” Kelly Jennings’ “Broken Slate;” RJ Astruc’s “A
Festival of Skeletons;” as well as the anthologies “Subversion,” “Fat Girl in a
Strange Land” and the upcoming “Menial: Skilled Labor in SF.”
For
more information about “Ink,” or any of Crossed Genres’ titles, contact Bart
Leib at 617- 335- 2101 or by sending an email to publicity@crossedgenres.com.
