Just before her father’s sudden death, Cuban- American artist Veronica Gonzalez is offered her first gallery exhibit, a real chance to break into the art world. Torn between the need to mourn and the pressure to create new artwork, Veronica is propelled into a fever-dream of productivity and grief, amidst memories of her tumultuous relationship with her colorful but infuriating Cuban émigré father, a volatile man of outsize appetites and passions who never stopped longing for his homeland. Praised by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka for its “lyrical pace and texture,” WHITE LIGHT maps a young woman’s struggle to distill her grief, rage, and love onto the canvas. “A relentless engine, told in rich, smart prose and lucid detail—equal parts elegy and portrait of an artist. A lush, vibrant portrayal of the creative process, a daughter’s love, and the unstoppable maelstrom of grief.”—Kirkus, starred review Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Women’s Studies.
About the Author: Vanessa Garcia
Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist working as a novelist, playwright, and journalist. Her debut novel, White Light, was published in 2015, to great critical acclaim. Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, Al Dia, Flavorwire, and numerous other publications and institutions, the novel catapulted Garcia into the “2016 Top 10 New Latino Writers to Watch (and Read).” Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. These include The Cuban Spring (a full-length Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015) and The Crocodile’s Bite (a short included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; the City Theatre Anthology 2015; and the Writer’s Digest Annual Award Anthology, 2015). As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times; The Miami Herald; The Washington Post; The Southern Humanities Review; The Art Basel Magazine; The Rumpus, among numerous other publications. She’s also a Huffington Post blogger. She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History). She’s currently completing a memoir entitled My Cuban Routes.
Reviews/Quotes
This first novel by Vanessa Garcia, the 2009 runner-up for the Rolex Mentor/Protege Initiative for Literature, has indirectly rewarded that project in its world-wide search for fresh talent in the Arts. A subtly woven network of relationships, it seduces with its lyrical pace and texture, tender and poignant, yet unsentimental. An artiste’s "walk in the woods" that gently takes the reader by the hand. —Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, author of You Must Set Forth at Dawn and Outsiders A relentless engine, told in rich, smart prose and lucid detail—equal parts elegy and portrait of an artist. A lush, vibrant portrayal of the creative process, a daughter’s love, and the unstoppable maelstrom of grief.—Kirkus, starred review A beautiful meditation on the creation of art and difficult familial love.—National Public Radio [An] intense, . . . emotionally charged portrait of [a] troubled Miami artist. —Miami Herald [A] specific yet universal account of every woman who has ever struggled to fully claim her creativity. —Paula Lee, BookWheel’s #30Authors White Light is a wonderfully generous creation, including a myriad of worlds while never blurring the firm line with which the author is always in control. The world of visual arts, of a Cuban American daughter and her difficult father, of food—its joys and terrors—of a young woman's trying to navigate her way in a world that offers her simultaneously too few and too many possibilities. It is a throbbingly original achievement.—Mary Gordon, author of The Love of My Youth and Spending Vanessa Garcia’s brilliant first novel is a fresh contribution to the American portrait of an artist, following a young Cuban-American woman through a journey of personal disaster juxtaposed against professional success. White Light illuminates the complex assimilation of past into present, of heritage into culture, of life into the sort of art that is lasting, meaningful and necessary. —A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill and Blue Water Many-tongued and of mixed-media, White Light is a novel as much about losing a father as about constructing a self through art—and as vibrant for its intelligence as for its emotions, colors, and pure passion. —Jane Alison, author of The Sisters Antipodes || REVIEWS: Kirkus Reviews: “A relentless engine, told in rich, smart prose and lucid detail—equal parts elegy and portrait of an artist. A lush, vibrant portrayal of the creative process, a daughter’s love, and the unstoppable maelstrom of grief.” (starred review) National Public Radio: “A beautiful meditation on the creation of art and difficult familial love.” (Best Books of 2015) Miami Herald: “[An] intense, . . . emotionally charged portrait of [a] troubled Miami artist.” Paula Lee, BookWheel’s #30Authors: “[A] specific yet universal account of every woman who has ever struggled to fully claim her creativity.” Reviews, Press Coverage, and Readings Reviews: Kirkus (starred); National Public Radio; Miami Herald; Cuba Counterpoints; #30Authors Awards and honors: NPR’s Best Books of 2015; Finalist, 2016 International Latino Book Awards; Flavorwire’s Best Overlooked Titles of 2015; NBC Latino’s Great New Books by Latino Authors; Al Día’s “Not New York Times” summer reading list; Navdeep Singh Dhillon’s Kickass Diverse Novels of 2015; Late Night Library's Recommended Debut Novels Book of the Month pick, Latina Book Club, Las Comadres National Latino Book Club Author profiles: Miami New Times; The New Tropic; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Miami Herald Selected Links: Kirkus: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/vanessa-garcia/white-light-garcia/ NPR: http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2015/#/book/white-light NBC Latino: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/summer-reading-list-9-great-new-books-latino-authors-n388826 Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/books/article35696334.html #30Authors: http://www.eclecticbookworms.com/2015/09/30-books-in-30-days.html Others to be found on author site: www.vanessagarcia.org Or, publisher site: http://www.shademountainpress.com/vanessagarcia.php
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