This Is the Only Kingdom
Hardback
A Novel
Growing up in Puerto Rico, Maricarmen works hard, getting good grades, and cleaning houses after school. She dreams of becoming a singer. When she meets Rey, a young Black musician, she falls in love with his dynamism, his band, and his voice. But when her mother discovers her relationship with a Black man, she puts Maricarmen out on the street. During the rise of the drug crisis sweeping their tight-knit community, Maricarmen fights to make a home for herself, for Rey, for Rey's young brother Tito, and eventually, for her daughter Nena. When Rey is murdered, it falls to Maricarmen to raise both Nena and Tito, holding down two jobs to take care of them.
Fifteen years later, when Tito doesn't come home after a night out, Maricarmen and Nena find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation, as the community that had once rallied to support Rey turns against them. In a moment of desperation, and struggling to protect her teenage daughter, Maricarmen gives up, leaving Nena to find her own way. From the author of the critically acclaimed Ordinary Girls, a searing and moving portrait of a family torn apart, determined to find their way back.Buy now!
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- ISBN: 9781616209148
- Author: Jaquira Diaz
- Pub date: 30.12.25
- RRP: $65.00
- Format: Hardback
Author
Jaquira Diaz
Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Diaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize.
The recipient of the Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, Diaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, and The Fader, and her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University's MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She lives in New York with her spouse, the writer Lars Horn, and teaches at Columbia University.Other books by the author
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