Lucky Boy, a story about motherhood, migration, and love

A young Mexican, Soli Castro-Valdez, leaves her family to venture to a better life in the United States. A married couple of Indian descent wants to take the next step in their marriage: start a family. These stories intertwine in a world of emotions that Shanthi Sekaran created for his second novel, Lucky Boy.

I sat with Shanthi Sekaran, the author of Lucky Boy, to talk about migration, motherhood, hope, and love. 

What comes after reality? James Joyce’s Ulysses

Writing, as well as reading, takes place in a constant tension between the real and the imaginary. It is a string that unites two extremes: creation and death, writing and reading, start and end. But this string is more of a thin chain of fragile words that by themselves lose all meaning, words that join one another to form ideas.

All words are indispensable, they carry a weight, a meaning, a sound, an irreplaceable aura. Therefore, language is the inherent rumor of words that abandon their state of inertia to fulfill their need for communication. Hence, the work of a writer is to condense this murmur and make the words speak to each other, but also speak what the author wants and speak something to the reader.

At the beginning of the 20th century, along with the great technological, social, and literary innovations, one of the most important figures of literature emerges in Dublin. James Joyce became the legend he is today by not only writing stories that generated a large number of admirers but by creating a new narrative dimension that broke with the traditional norms and where voices were fragmented into different characters, styles, and forms.

If needed to condense Joyce’s contribution to literature is the welcoming of an expansive voice that comes and goes, turns and falls. A voice with cubist overtones that generates a depth that allows a sincere expressiveness of reality.

Some stories start with a goodbye

Adiós a los padres (2014), the novel that ends the 7 years’ silence of Mexican novelist Héctor Aguilar Camín, is not an autobiography but a work of introspection intended to figure out why he is who he is.

Although it starts with a picture of his newly married parents, the novel doesn’t redeem his obstinate and alcoholic father or his tragically devoted mother. It is not a thank you note to his aunt Luisa, nor it wants to condemn his grandfather, who more than a patriarch was a dictator. It is a puzzle of his own life, a family photo album with petrified moments unfamiliar to the reality of the present.