Some Final Beauty and Other Stories showcases women and Chicanx characters whose resistance, reconciliation, and strength vigorously affirm community. Author Lisa Alvarez captures the spirit of empowerment in the struggle for justice faced by marginalized communities in a nation defined by politicians from Reagan to Trump.

From the vibrant streets of Southern California to the arid Nevada Nuclear Test Site, these thematically linked stories explore self-discovery, rebellion, and solidarity as complex personalities and values meet at the intersection of art, love, relationships, activism, and identity. A Mexican American returns from WWII to encounter Paul Robeson. A Spanish Civil War veteran befriends a recovering addict. Young 1980s female activists take to the streets. A big-city Latino mayor discovers the limits of ambition. A grieving aunt confronts her dead niece’s toxic lover.

Both the author and her characters interrogate finality while insisting on the beauty of everyday human engagement, often steeped in Hispanic culture, and stubbornly demanding joyful civic participation. Alvarez constructs more than a sharp, empathetic and funny sociological survey of experiences. She crafts a chronicle of lives lived with purpose, resilience, and the hope of a better future.

Published by Nevada University Press.

“Lisa Alvarez is a California writer and this is a remarkable California book of landscapes and people and families in the fading light, living at the edges of the dream. In Alvarez’s steady hand, they become full, complex, alive, hopeful. This is an astonishing collection.”

—Sameer Pandya, author of Our Beautiful Boys

"Lisa Alvarez's Southern California is one of melancholy and beauty, cities and canyons, insurrections and mariachis and secrets kept and spoken. Gorgeous pacing, storytelling prose — gorgeous." 

—Gustavo Arellano, LA Times columnist and co-author of A People's Guide to Orange County

“Lisa Alvarez is a writer with a deep vision of the human possibilities and the moral questions of our time, and this luminous and empathic collection will reveal her to readers as a hidden gem of the West.”

—Héctor Tobar, author of Our Migrant Souls and The Barbarian Nurseries

“Lisa Alvarez’s Some Final Beauty and Other Stories is a subtle counterpunch to the brutality, racism, cruelty, and injustice of an America emboldened by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump alike. With balanced prose, an eye for details, and a wide-ranging perspective, Alvarez’s stories are perceptive, graceful, entertaining, and insightful. Often marginalized, discounted, and ignored, Alvarez’s characters are tactical and keen observers, and they have the blessing and curse of foresight. Regardless of the David and Goliath obstacles, their survival comes from right actions, and they thrive in quietly beautiful and profound ways. “I am still a person who joins the march,” one explains, “puts one foot in front of the other, who still believes in the words she chants, who carries signs lettered with impossible demands.” This is an essential story collection for this moment, one that offers hope and fortitude.”

—Victoria Patterson, author of The Secret Habit of Sorrow: Stories

Photo: Jonar Isip