Brown Ink publishes books that blend text with graphics, and drawings with words across all genres: fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, autoethnography, among others. Brown Ink is dedicated to showcasing stories focused on Latinx/e/a/o experiences and identities.
Brown Ink Titles
Moscow '93, A Brown Ink publication
Russia in the 1990s: what better place for 20-something Chicano journalist José Alonzo to make his name? At the opening of a New York-style night club on Red Square, the free libations are flowing, the floor show is raunchy, and all of expat Moscow is wheeling and dealing. But things are never what they seem in this new post-Soviet country striving for freedom, democracy and ... whatever - and falling far short. In fact, these party-goers will soon have a life-or-death national crisis blow up in their faces.
Recalling the techniques of Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta, Moscow '93 is a gonzo autofictional account of the author's experiences before, during and after the 1993 "October events," when a violent revolt against President Boris Yeltsin erupts in the capital. By the time it's over, army tanks will shell the parliament building (aka "White House"), reducing it to a burned-out husk. And a hung-over Alonzo is right in the middle of it, dodging bullets like everyone else. All this and a Michael Jackson concert!
Blending horror and farce, mashing up Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City and Venedikt Erofeyev's Moscow to the End of the Line (with a real-life armed insurrection thrown in), Moscow '93 presents Russia in the first decade after communism through the lens of a sordid expat scene. A scene that, one day, exploded into a war zone.
Product Details:
Paperback
6 x 9 inches
98 pages
ISBN:978-1-963245-83-7
Tales of Bart, A Brown Ink publication
A Parisian café waiter discovers a mysterious package of documents left by a fugitive-like stranger, unraveling a kaleidoscope of multilingual wordplay, historical intrigue, dystopian visions, and literary puzzles. Tales of Bart-a nod to Alexander Pushkin's Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin-follows the scandalous exploits of "evil" translator Fruitvale Bart. Spanning Republic-era Texas, 19th-century Russia, far-future Atalanta, and 1990s Los Angeles, each vignette is tied to Bart's provocative translations. Alaniz's novel probes the nature of translation-faithful reproduction or creative reinvention-and explores art, colonial legacies, postmodern alienation, and the horrors of the self in dazzling, thought-provoking layers.
Product Details:
Paperback
8.5 x 11 inches
220 pages
ISBN:978-1-963245-82-0
PUTINOIKA is a multi-genre epic about frenzy and plague in the era of Putin and Trump. Inspired by the ancient Greek tragedies, PUTINOIKA unfolds in three-parts: Palinode, Bacchae, and Putinoika. In a world flooding with collusion, delusion, and pollution, hope not only stands its ground in PUTINOIKA, but it also elevates us to higher realms with exhilarating new literary forms, poetic expressions, and a renewed faith in creativity. PUTINOIKA insists that poets, philosophers, and lovers have the capacity to create on a scale greater than society’s capacity to destroy. If Waiting for Godot is a threnody of hope in the atomic age, PUTINOIKA is the “Invictus” we didn’t know we were waiting for after the global pandemic.
Miguel-Angel Zapata reviews PUTiNOIKA: “Its light comes from an apparent chaos, a mirror of our time, written in a precise, profane, and sweetly convulsive language.” Latino Book Review
“Give me more Putinas, por favor: A Conversation with Giannina Braschi.” Sandra Guzmán interviews Giannina Braschi in World Literature Today
Paperback
6 x 9 inches
294 pages
ISBN: 978-1-963245-78-3
Max Rodriguez (née Maxine) could read before they could talk, devouring comics, novels, and books on philosophy. This helps them later to navigate the topsy-turvy life as a 9th grader in Nowheresville, California. Max’s adventures include encounters with their spirited abuelita (aka Tatabuela), who drives a Hulk-green muscle car and grows marijuana in her attic; an estranged, self-styled John-Wayne-strutting Irish American grandpa, Logan; a fair-weather papá named Carlos; Mamá, a fiercely independent, bilingual elementary school teacher; and a taciturn older brother, Che, about to head to college. Others in Max’s orbit include a compassionate tío, Jorge, who fears the loss of loved ones to a rising AIDS epidemic, activist prima, Lara, as well as wild and zany best friends, Rudy and Miguel. Tears, laughter, courage, and unyielding love shape Max’s journey of self-discovery.
"Fiction as the Distillation and Reconstruction of Reality." Interview. Latino Book Review
"YA Fiction, Latino family, Misfits, 80s music, LGBTQ Coming of Age." Interview. Latinx Pop Magazine
Mariela Pinilla Reviews The Absolutely (Almost) True Adventures of Max Rodriguez. Latinx Pop Magazine
From the kid who handed out her parents’ rent money at recess to the one that brought 100 strike-anywhere matches on the 100th day of school, Mr. Villegas has survived field trips gone feral, staff feuds, and the unpredictable absurdity of Los Angeles kindergartners. What he learned—about education, race, class, language, queerness, and the truth of who gets to be a “real teacher”—is far more explosive than anything any chamaco ever carried in his backpack.
For twenty years, Mr. Villegas taught kindergarten and preschool in the public schools of the City of Angels—Title I classrooms filled with chaos, comedy, heartbreak, and the kind of tiny epiphanies that stay with you for life. In Your a Fat Suckr Bich, he gathers twenty-five irreverent, funny, and deeply reflective essays that capture the real world behind the bulletin boards and behavior charts.
Vibrantly illustrated by artist Hector Garza, Your a Fat Suckr Bich is both a love letter to teaching and a challenge to the sanitized mythology of the bonneted schoolmistress of the one-room schoolhouse. It’s a book for educators, parents, policymakers, and anyone ready to see what really happens when you put a writer in a room and ask him to hand over the power of language to five-year-olds.
America has no idea what teachers do. This book is here to change that.
Brown Ink, an imprint of FlowerSong Press