Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse, the PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park, returns with a riveting literary dystopian novel set in a near-future America where mandatory identification wristbands make second-generation immigrants into second-class citizens—a powerful family saga for readers of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind. Iris Prince is starting over. After years of drifting apart, she and her husband are going through a surprisingly drama-free divorce. She's moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, and has plans for gardening, coffee clubs, and spending more time with her nine-year-old daughter Melanie. It feels like her life is finally exactly what she wants it to be. Then, one beautiful morning, she looks outside her kitchen window—and sees that a wall has appeared in her front yard overnight. Where did it come from? What does it mean? And why does it seem to keep growing? Meanwhile, a Silicon Valley startup has launched a high-tech wrist wearable called "the Band." Pitched as a convenient, eco-friendly tool to help track local utilities and replace driver's licenses and IDs, the Band is available only to those who can prove parental citizenship. Suddenly, Iris, a proud second-generation Mexican-American, is now of "unverifiable origin," unable to prove who she is, or where she, and her undocumented loved ones, belong. Amid a climate of fear and hate-fueled violence, Iris must confront how far she'll go to protect what matters to her most. My Name Is Iris is an all-too-possible story about family, intolerance, and hope, offering a brilliant and timely look at one woman’s journey to discover who she can’t—and can—be.

A Novel

My Name Is Iris

Explores the lives of those who shed their ethnic identity in pursuit of the American dream with a different character in each chapter, including Hector, a day laborer who witnesses a murder, and Felicia, who survives a drive-by shooting.

The Madonnas of Echo Park

Lisa Frazier Page

"For some, "passing" means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don't willfully pass but are "passed" in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask, edited by authors Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, is an illuminating and timely anthology of original essays that examines the complex reality of passing in America."--

15 True Stories of Passing in America

We Wear the Mask

The award-winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park traces his turbulent childhood under the shadow of his dynamic mother and five stepfathers, describing how his mother reinvented their pasts in ways that challenged the author's efforts to reconnect with his biological father.

Brando Skyhorse

Books

Your next favorite book is out there