TOMAS MONIZ is a latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/ Hemingway and the LAMBDA. His second novel, All Friends Are Necessary, won the 2024 California Golden Poppy Award. To celebrate his new novel, The King of Aloe Vera, Tomas shares his recommended reading list with us below. But first, words from Tomas:

“I had this anxiety attack one night after an elder I knew passed on and I wondered, when was the last time I talked to them, asked questions, listened to the stories of what led them to this point in their life. I noticed my mother getting older, my tios and tias.

We work so hard to make it, to build family and community, and then too often, once a person becomes an elder, they are ignored or tolerated or forgotten.

There’s a character in my novel, Tilda, who is part of a group calling themselves: The Raging Elders, which in my mind is the best, most hilarious and yet serious point in the story. I want to be her!

The King of Aloe Vera is an ode to aging, to growing old, to surviving and being able to pass things on.

Here’s a list of books that I think of as my literary elders: the books that shaped me.”

Song of Soloman by Toni Morrison

“There is a line in this book that moves me to tears every time I recall it: ‘You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.’ This novel is an act of liberation: a meditation on masculinity, on friendship, on radical politics and community and self destruction. Read it and fly.”

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

“Big books are in vogue now: East of Eden and Lonesome Dove and yeah they are problematic as hell, but I understand why people keep picking them up. However, everyone who reads those books (or any book about the U.S. Southwest) should read Leslie Marion Silko’s Almanac of the Dead: the scope, the vision, the world building, the critical fabulation of imagining an invasion of the U.S. by Indigenous Mexican revolutionaries, armed homeless reclaiming Tuscon, AZ. The book is magic, a cleanse, perhaps a solution…”

Mrs. Dolloway by Virgina Woolf

“This book spins away from me every time I try to nail it down: its literary craft, its ability to enter into the specificity of each person, the illumination of desire and desperation and our beautiful and terrifying interdependence. Don’t even try to read a synopsis; just let the novel sweep you up. PS: and my goodness, the use of semicolons thrills.”

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

“There are few books of poems that have stayed with me as much as Jericho Brown’s 2019 The Tradition with lines like: ‘Steadfast and awful, my tall father / Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks.’ But then Brown takes the reader through the pain and discomfort of healing those marks to the aching beauty of surviving, of forgiving, of loving. Because as another line that resonates with me states: ‘None of the beaten end up how we began.’ Such a powerful mantra and reminder: none of us will end up where we began.”