Love War Stories

Love War Stories
200 Pages
ISBN 978-1936932252

One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2018 according to: Cosmopolitan, The Root, Electric Literature, Bitch, AutoStraddle, She Reads, and Volumes Bookcafe

"Love War Stories serves up love every which way: thwarted, obsessive, suffered over, delirious, consummated, unexpected. It rejects cultural traditions yet remains beholden to them. It fights with itself and others. It worships Julia de Burgos (as do I). And at its best, it is sublime. Brava to Ivelisse Rodriguez for a stunning debut!" —Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban

“A tough, smart, dazzling debut by a tough, smart, dazzling writer. Ivelisse Rodriguez is a revelation.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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Is it possible to fall in love and not be destroyed in the process? Ivelisse Rodriguez’s collection, Love War Stories, reports from the front lines of the never-ending battle between romantic ideals and the reality of gendered violence.

These intimate tales follow a series of young Puerto Rican women as they navigate the shaky terrain of teenage crushes, sexual awakening, and grown-up commitment. Rodriguez’s protagonists come of age steeped in the love stories—and anti-love stories—of their battle-scarred parents, whose romantic histories are marked by betrayal and grief. As these “love wars” unfold, a generation of would-be true lovers pursues the question of what makes love last—and what comes after.

A candid ode to love’s blissful highs and excruciating lows, Love War Stories spotlights the complex inner lives of Puerto Rican girls as they grasp for alternatives to an omnipresent narrative of female victimhood.

Ivelisse Rodriguez

About Ivelisse Rodriguez (Greensboro, North Carolina Author)

Ivelisse Rodriguez

Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Ivelisse Rodriguez grew up in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. in English from Columbia University, an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. in English-creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Her short story collection, Love War Stories, is forthcoming from The Feminist Press in summer 2018. Her fiction chapbook The Belindas was published in 2017. She has also published fiction in All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color, Obsidian, Label Me Latina/o, Kweli, the Boston Review, the Bilingual Review, Aster(ix), and other publications. She is the founder and editor of an interview series, published in Centro Voices, the e-magazine of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, focused on contemporary Puerto Rican writers in order to highlight the current status and the continuity of a Puerto Rican literary tradition from the continental US that spans over a century. She was a senior fiction editor at Kweli and is a Kimbilio fellow and a VONA/Voices alum. She is currently working on the novel ‘The Last Salsa Singer’ about 70s era salsa musicians in Puerto Rico.