There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven
El Salvador United States

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven

by Ruben Reyes Jr.

Immigration Literary Fiction Sci-Fi 2024

Summary

What happens when your life becomes unrecognisable overnight? In this imaginative debut collection, Ruben Reyes Jr. blends speculative fiction, magical realism, and dark humour to explore the experiences of Salvadoran immigrants and their descendants. An ordinary man wakes up to discover he has become a famous reggaetón star. An elderly grandmother gradually transforms into a marionette puppet. A researcher uncovers a disturbing programme that turns the bodies of undocumented migrants into artificial labourers.

Moving between alternate histories, dystopian futures, and surreal versions of everyday life, these stories explore the forces that shape Central American identity. Family ties stretch across borders, technology offers unsettling solutions to human problems, and bureaucratic systems reduce lives to statistics. Beneath the collection’s strange and often absurd scenarios lies a serious examination of migration, colonial legacies, capitalism, and the struggle to be heard in a world that marginalises certain voices. Both inventive and deeply human, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven challenges readers to reconsider whose stories are told—and what it costs to build a new life far from home.

Reviews

Login to leave a review.

No reviews yet. Be the first!

You might also like

The Taste of Sugar
The Taste of Sugar
Marisel Vera
Dominicana
Dominicana
Angie Cruz
Neruda on the Park
Neruda on the Park
Cleyvis Natera
Cold Zero
Cold Zero
Brad Thor, Ward Larsen
Countries
El Salvador
North America
United States
North America
About the author
Ruben Reyes Jr.
Ruben Reyes Jr.

Ruben Reyes Jr. is an American writer and the son of Salvadoran immigrants. Originally from Southern California, he studied history and literature at Harvard College, where he founded the Latinx literary magazine Palabritas. He later earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa’s prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His fiction and essays have appeared in publications including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, AGNI, and Lightspeed. Reyes’s debut collection, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven (2024), received recognition for its inventive combination of speculative fiction, satire, and magical realism to examine migration and Salvadoran identity. His writing often explores the experiences of immigrant families, the persistence of historical injustice, and the ways technology and social systems shape human lives. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

View author page
Details
Published
2024
Author
Ruben Reyes Jr.