América del Norte

December 1, 2023

A winner of the 2023 n+1 Writers' Fellowship debuts with a near-autofiction bildungsroman centered on Sebasti�n, who was raised in an elite Mexican family, graduates from Yale, and is accepted into the Iowa Writers Workshop. His gilded life is opened to new examination in the wake of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Prepub Alert.

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March 25, 2024
In Mora’s incisive and witty debut, a Mexican writer reckons with his cultural identity in the wake of Trump’s draconian immigration policies. In fall 2016, Sebastián Arteaga y Salazar, a 20-something Yale grad, returns to the U.S. from his home in Mexico City to enroll in the University of Iowa’s MFA program for nonfiction. There, classmates are ignorant of his criollo heritage and dismiss his interest in Western philosophy (“All this theory and history and stuff—why don’t you give us a character we can identify with.... Tell us about Mexico”). The next semester, Sebastian hires a lawyer to help him secure a “specialized-alien” visa, but even with his accomplishments, the application is denied. Meanwhile, he’s started dating fellow Yalie Lee, who visits Iowa to evaluate the musicology graduate program and shares with him an interest in literature. As their relationship intensifies, the couple sees only one way forward—a marriage that neither is ready for. The author casts a wry look at the absurdities of American writing programs and of Trump’s immigration policies, but what makes this special are his insights on the inner drive of aspiring artists and thinkers. It’s an arresting novel of ideas. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin Literary.

April 15, 2024
A piercing critique of the shallowness of academia and the souffl�like weightlessness of American culture. As romans � clef go, this doesn't get much more clef-y. A young Mexican journalist (like Medina Mora), Sebasti�n Arteaga y Salazar, gets a scholarship to Iowa (like Medina Mora), and, on graduating, spurns residence in the U.S. to return to Mexico City (like Medina Mora). On that scaffolding the author builds a steely-eyed but not unsympathetic portrait of the people he meets. "In Mexico, not even the oligarchs are happy," notes Sebas, as his American friends dub him. He comes from a well-to-do household, its head a Supreme Court judge, in a country so riven by inequality that he's moved to ask his police bodyguard, "Why haven't the poor killed the rich already?" He arrives in the promised land of El Norte brilliantly well versed in literature, philosophy, history, art, to find most of his would-be compatriots profoundly ignorant. The Swiftian cast of characters includes the "Austro-Hungarians" of Sebasti�n's privileged class and family and, in Iowa, writer wannabes dubbed "the Decanonizer," "the Pseudo-Anthropologist," and "the Delightful Kid from Michigan." What he learns from those north-of-the-liners, including a girlfriend who's a groupie of all things Latine, is that, as Habsburgian as he might be, he's still just another brown person to them. More, after years in the U.S., "I loved America more than myself, but America didn't love me back," which causes him to head home, now disabused. Among many highlights: a splendid evisceration of "a Proud Boy-in-training" writing student and a superb closing paragraph that quietly evokes The Great Gatsby while being utterly original. A debut from an author to keep on your radar, assured, darkly funny, and impeccably written.

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May 1, 2024
The breezy, buoyant debut by Mexican journalist Medina Mora weaves together hundreds of years of Mexican history and culture with the frequently satiric story of young writer and narrator Sebastian Arteaga y Salazar (who shares some similarities with the author). In 2017, Sebastian is attempting to continue his ten-year stay in the U.S. despite the current president's attacks on immigration. He also struggles to write a book, deals with his clueless undergraduate students at an Iowa university, copes with an on-and-off romance with an American woman (who has had a a series of lovers from Latin America), and visits his friends and cancer-stricken mother in Mexico City. The heir of a powerful family of Austro-Hungarian immigrants to Mexico, Sebastian intersperses his story with a dizzying series of vignettes about figures from and periods of Mexican history, presumably taken from the many versions of the book he's been trying for years to complete. Readers willing to go along for a kaleidoscopic and occasionally overwhelming journey will get to know Sebastian's Mexico and unique point of view.

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