The Center for Equity and Inclusion and the UW Tacoma Library — co-founders of Real Lit[erature]: Reading for Social Justice — are thrilled to announce an author talk Tuesday, March 9th,  with National Book Award finalist Randy Ribay, author of Patron Saints of Nothing.

Ribay’s book is A National Book Award Finalist, An NPR Best Book of the Year, A New York Public Library Top 10 Best Book of the Year, and A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, to name just a bit of the attention this book has garnered.

Here’s the summary from the publisher:

“A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin’s murder. Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth — and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.”

Once you register, you will receive a zoom link.