Cultural Myths - Sanjena Sathian and Kirstin Valdez Quade

A myth is often a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes. Sanjena Sathian’s book Gold Diggers is a magical realist coming-of-age story that skewers the model minority myth to tell a hilarious and moving story about immigrant identity, community, and the underside of ambition. Discovering that his love is the beneficiary of an ancient, alchemical potion made from stolen gold—a “lemonade” that harnesses the ambition of the gold’s original owner—Neil sees his chance to get ahead.

In Kirstin Valdez Quade’s The Five Wounds, it’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption.