The People Who Report More Stress Stories

by Varela, Alejandro

• ISBN13: 9781662601071
• ISBN10: 1662601077
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781662601088
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-04-04
• Publisher: Astra House
• More Book Details
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Summary

A Best Book of 2023 - Publisher's Weekly, Electric Literature, Chicago Public Library

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 STORY PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE

"Alejandro Varela’s The People Who Report More Stress: Stories is a master class in analyzing the unspoken." —The New York Times

"A searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality." —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic.

In “Midtown-West Side Story,” Álvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, and the restaurant’s regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs.

“The Man in 512” tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings and goings of an affluent co-op building, all the while teaching the children Spanish through Selena’s music catalog.

“Comrades” follows a queer man with radical politics who just ended a long-term relationship and is now on the hunt for a life partner. With little tolerance for political moderates, his series of speed dates devolve into awkward confrontations that leave him wondering if his approach is the correct one.

A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stress deftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society’s inequities but being unable to do anything about them.

Author Biography

Alejandro Varela (he/him) is based in New York. His work has appeared in The Point magazine, Boston Review, Harper's Magazine, The Rumpus, Joyland Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, Blunderbuss Magazine, Pariahs (an anthology, SFA Press, 2016), the Southampton Review, and The New Republic. He is a 2019 Jerome Fellow in Literature and his graduate studies were in public health. His first novel, The Town of Babylon, was published by Astra House in 2022.