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Christ Like: tenth anniversary revised edition
by Emanuel Xavier
ISBN: 978-0-9790838-5-3
Quality Paperback, 260pp.
Price $16.95
“Christ Like is the harrowing first novel by Emanuel Xavier. When it was first published ten years ago, it announced the arrival of a unique and important new voice among both gay and Latino/a writers. Ten years later, the novel retains its compelling power as it takes the reader on a jagged journey though the New York club scene; in theme and naked urgency, it may be justly compared to Dancer from the Dance and Last Exit to Brooklyn, but its heartbeat is puro latino.” —Michael Nava, author of The Little Death and Rag and Bone
“With Christ Like, Xavier demonstrates the literary splendor and heroic telling of Piri Thomas (Down These Mean Streets), and Junot Diaz (Drown) . . . Like the people that it represents, Christ Like is full of wit, charm, attitude, and resilience. This ain’t no sad song. This is the story of how a rock can turn itself into a gem.” —Lambda Book Report
“The emotional honesty of Emanuel Xavier’s writing grabs and holds you like a vice. For more than a decade, Xavier has been an essential voice for an urban, queer aesthetic that has much to teach the world about creativity, resilience, and unflinching love. In re-issuing this rare work, he has given us all a gift.” —Kai Wright, author of Drifting Toward love
“An open hearted novel from the soul of New York City. From the Valencia Bakery to Club Escuelita, a first generation American is forced to the edge by other people's prejudices. There he finds love, hate, pleasure, and danger with a wide array of men whose lives are never recorded in American literature. This novel will not come out of an MFA program or be optioned for HBO because of the censorship of experience in our current arts and entertainment industry. But its story of people valued, thrown-away, losing, and surviving is central to understanding who we are and where we live. All of us.”—Sarah Schulman
“... the engaging voice of the author draws you in almost immediately ... the unique voice and authenticity to every small detail make this story truly shine.”—Rainbow Reviews
“... however Christ-like Mikey is or isn't, his ultimate determination to rise above his victimization does give this work a spiritual kick that will resonate with readers.”—A&U
“By his own admission, there’s a lot of Emanuel Xavier in Mikey X, the fiercely self-destructive Puerto Rican club kid, survivor of horrific boyhood abuse, who poses, vogues, drugs and whores his way through the late ‘80s and early ‘90s of the gritty Manhattan gay Latino street scene. First published in 1999 and revised for this 10th-anniversary
edition – “I have made it a bit more of a memoir, though it remains a work of fiction” – the book retains a jagged immediacy despite its chronological distance from the author’s younger experiences. The story’s setting is atmospheric and realistically raw, but there’s a
softer side, too, as Mikey struggles to escape a numbing cycle of sex and drugs, finally finding redemption through engagement with a spirituality that’s the antithesis of his Catholic upbringing. As with Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance – the moneyed, white flip side of Xavier’s street-level demimonde decadence – the novel has
evolved since its first publication into a seminal record of a particular queer culture’s era.”
-Book Marks
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Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry
Edited by Emanuel Xavier
“The 17 writers collected in Xavier's dynamic anthology of contemporary Latino poets make up a real mosaic. Some are American-born, others hail from Argentina, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Their poems are in English, in Spanish, even in "Spanglish"; some are bilingual, and a few Spanish-language poems also appear in English, translated by Xavier - a vibrant diversity connected by mutual queerness and common themes. One such theme is sexual desire: "Why, my God, do I like men so much?" Daniel Torres wonders, and "Suddenly, our sex lives were full of safety drills," Rane Arroyo laments. Another is defiant anger: "There are not enough hate crimes/ to kill us all," Yosimar Reyes declares in memory of murdered queens, and "You call me wet back/ Yes my back is wet/ Wet of sweat/ Wet of blood," Xuan Carlos Espinoza-Cuellar cries in the face of immigrant-bashing. Xavier is a generous editor: instead of compiling a "greatest hits" sampler of one or two poems by many poets, he has opted to limit the number of contributors, giving each a real showcase for his talent.”
-Book Marks
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Best Gay Erotica 2008
Selected and introduced by Emanuel Xavier
from Introduction: Finding Myself in the Narrative by Emanuel Xavier
It’s easy to forget we are a nation at war when sex is everywhere around us—the front pages of
newspapers, all over the Internet, used to sell everything from cars to shoes to kitchen
appliances. Gay sex is fashionable and mainstream. Even if it’s subtle, all one has to do is pick
up a magazine or turn on the television. I would be a hypocrite to claim not to indulge in such
pleasures because I would rather focus on the realities of the world. Let’s face it—if every
consenting adult could enjoy sex without repercussions, the world would be a better place.
I must admit this collection should be titled Best Gay Erotica 2008 According to a Latino Former Prostitute Turned Poet. No one can truly claim these are the “best” gay erotic short stories of the year—but they’re certainly the best from among the several hundred submitted to Richard (Labonte).
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Pier Queen