Growing Through the Ugly: A Novel

“This funky, disturbing, lyrical, coming-of-age novel covers more ground—emotional, social, terrestrial, and celestial—than its brevity suggests. Focusing on how it could have felt to be a kid, Tex-Mex, sexually mixed-up, hip yet dumb, dangerously uncool, and terminally romantic in the very early sixties, Diego Vázquez has given us the unforgettable Buzzy Digit, whose voice sounds like no one else in recent American fiction.” —Al Young, author of Heaven: Collected Poems, 1956-1990