How To Date A Flying Mexican: New & Collected Stories by Daniel A. Olivas

How to Date a Flying Mexican is a collection of stories derived from Chicano and Mexican culture but ranging through fascinating literary worlds of magical realism, fairy tales, fables, and dystopian futures. The characters confront—both directly and obliquely—questions of morality, justice, and self-determination.

The collection is made up of Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published stories, along with two new stories—one dystopian and the other mythical—that challenge the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. Readers will encounter a world filled with both the magical and the quotidian: a man with twelve fingers who finds himself on a mystical date with a woman, God who appears in the form of a scrawny chicken, a woman who bravely fights back against her abuser, and Aztec gods searching for relevance after the Spanish conquest—just to name a few of the unforgettable characters populating these pages. The book draws together some of Olivas’s most unforgettable and strange tales, allowing readers to experience his very distinct, and very Chicano, fiction.

About the Author

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of ten books including How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press), The King of Lighting Fixtures: Stories (University of Arizona Press), and Crossing the Border: Collected Poems (Pact Press). He is also the co-editor of The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tía Chucha Press), and editor of Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press). Olivas has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

Follow him on Twitter: @olivasdan.