Crosshairs: A Novel

by Catherine Hernandez

Overview

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The author of the acclaimed novel Scarborough weaves an unforgettable and timely dystopian tale about a near-future, where a queer Black performer and his allies join forces to rise up when an oppressive regime gathers those deemed “Other” into concentration camps.

Set in a terrifyingly familiar near-future, with massive floods leading to rampant homelessness and devastation, a government-sanctioned regime called The Boots seizes on the opportunity to round up communities of color, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ into labor camps.

In the shadows, a new hero emerges. After he loses his livelihood as a drag queen and the love of his life, Kay joins the resistance alongside Bahadur, a transmasculine refugee, and Firuzeh, a headstrong social worker. Guiding them in the use of weapons and close-quarters combat is Beck, a rogue army officer, who helps them plan an uprising at a major televised international event.

With her signature “raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful” (Booklist) prose, Catherine Hernandez creates a vision of the future that is all the more frightening because it is very possible. A cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters, Crosshairs explores the universal desire to thrive, love, and be loved for being your true self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982146023
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	12/08/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	178,108
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of color, radical mother, theater practitioner, award-winning author, and the artistic director of b current Performing Arts and the Sulong Theatre. She is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese, and Indian heritage, and she is married into the Navajo Nation. She is the author of the plays Singkil and Kilt Pins, the children’s book M Is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book, and the novels Scarborough and Crosshairs.

Editorial Reviews

09/07/2020

Hernandez’s searing if heavy-handed blend of dystopian fiction and social commentary (after Scarborough) conceives of a near future in which environmental disaster leads to a white supremacist regime in Canada. Kay, born Keith Nopuente, describes himself as a “Queer Femme Jamaican Filipino man” and is one of the “Others”—including LGBTQ, POC, and disabled people—who are being marginalized in a campaign to restore Canada to “order” and “tranquility” in the wake of floods and food shortages that caused mass displacement in the country. The Renovation, a government-sanctioned program, deploys special forces called the Boots to strip the Others of their rights in the name of providing food and shelter, rounding them up and forcing them to work in labor camps—or killing them for resisting. Kay hides out first in Toronto with Liv, a white, queer ally of the Resistance, and then at Beck’s, another queer, white ally. As the characters band together, they take steps toward a drastic action to gain the country’s attention. Hernandez takes a scathing look at discrimination and capitalism in her disturbingly familiar look at Western culture, but, unfortunately, this often reads more like a how-to-ally manual than a novel. While the premise is well-imagined, the story suffers from a lack of nuance. Agent: Marilyn Biderman, Transatlantic Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

A mindful cautionary tale written with an intentionality that allows for a fully fleshed-out, multifaceted story to emerge.

The Mary Sue

Gorgeously poetic.

BookPage

Crosshairs is at once a cautionary tale and nuanced dystopian novel about the dangers of otherizing people.

POPSUGAR

This cautionary tale is truly riveting.

HelloGiggles

In Crosshairs, Catherine Hernandez shapes a world at once fantastical and familiar, remarkable and relatable . . . The result is a sparkling but devastating novel about corporate and state cruelty, individual as well as community sacrifice, and Queer Black and Brown kinship that must be protected at all costs. Timely, unapologetic, complicated.

Jenny Heijun Wills

Crosshairs is both unnervingly prescient and undeniably profound. A harrowing work that's as much a battle cry as a ballad for the erased, and we should all be listening.

V.E. Schwab

A beautiful, unapologetic, and unwatered-down burst of fury against cis white supremacy and tyrannical power systems, centered around a main cast that must be fiercely protected. Hernandez writes the best kind of dystopian story, one that holds a sobering mirror up to our own world. Let this book haunt you.

Marie Lu

Hernandez is a talent undeniable. She’s an evocative, vibrant writer whose voice and point of view are an exciting addition to the literary landscape . . . Crosshairs tells a story of battling against the insidious nature of fascism and white supremacy by being unabashedly yourself.

USA Today

Compelling and unnerving, Crosshairs is a phenomenal literary achievement.

Ms. Magazine

Praise for Scarborough

“With its multiplicity of voices and its ability to walk the very fine line between nonjudgmental and nonexculpatory, the book is a sensitive and unvarnished look at a place with more than its fair share of troubles, and Hernandez shows that it is also a place that refuses to give up hope.” —Publishers Weekly

“Scarborough is raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful . . . It gives voice to people whose stories are often unheard, making this an important book that deserves a wide audience.” —Booklist

“Scarborough is important for many reasons; it’s also quite simply storytelling at its finest.” —Popmatters.com

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2020

After environmental catastrophe leads to mass displacement, a fascist government rises in Canada and launches the Renovation. Wealthy whites rule, while those who are Other—Black, Brown, LGBQT, and more—are hounded, lynched, and placed in concentration camps that purvey forced labor and genocide, though to the outside world they pass as workhouses furnishing much-needed jobs. Kay, a Queer Femme Jamaican Filipino man who worked as a drag queen before the Renovation drove him underground, hides in the basement of a white woman named Liv, who works for the resistance. Soon, Kay must go on the run again, joined by Iranian Trans Bahadur and assisted by Beck, a gay white soldier rebelling against the regime; eventually, they are persuaded to join the forthcoming uprising, though not before giving Beck an earful about his presumptions. Novelist/playwright Hernandez (Scarborough) deploys the well-developed characters effectively, creating a chilling and persuasive portrait of a scarily recognizable dystopia and building to a satisfying (if a bit overblown) ending. VERDICT A near-future tale of oppression and resistance that is deeply resonant today.

Library Journal

2020-10-14
In her second novel for adults, Hernandez imagines a repressive near future that feels like a slight exaggeration of the present.

The narrator, Kay Nopuente, describes himself as a “Queer Femme Jamaican Filipino man.” Evan is the lover from whom he was separated when the Canadian government launched the final phase of Renovation—a program that relocates anyone who deviates from a White, cisgender, straight norm to labor camps. Kay is lucky in that he has been sheltered by the Resistance. Part of the narrative focuses on Kay’s training to join an armed rebellion led by Others like him and allies committed to using their privilege on behalf of Others. Part of the narrative is made up of Kay’s comrades telling their stories. And much of the narrative is Kay’s own account of escaping abuse at the hands of his mother and her church and finding a community where he could live freely as himself. One chapter offers scenes of an army veteran who has joined the Resistance teaching Kay to shoot a gun interwoven with glimpses of Kay receiving instruction in the finer points from a more experienced performer. The juxtaposition is powerfully affecting. Beyond that, the disparate parts of this novel are uneven in quality and don’t create an entirely satisfying whole. One issue is that several key characters end up feeling more like allegorical examples than real people. Another is that, while Kay is an engaging protagonist and the details of his life would be sufficiently compelling if this novel were simply the story of his life, this novel is not simply the story of his life. Every time the story shifts back into the past, the plot loses momentum. In creating the Renovation and the Resistance, Hernandez is borrowing science-fiction conventions without fulfilling their promise. Taken altogether, every aspect of the novel feels underdeveloped and unfinished.

Earnest but disappointing.

Kirkus Reviews

Catherine Hernandez is groundbreaking. Her talent is remarkable. I dare you not to cry or scream or marvel or, like me, do all at once while reading this book. This story is a masterpiece of voice and metaphor, image and embodiment. But it is also a perfectly crafted portrait of us now, of us then, of the us we hope to be. I love this book, this big, bright missive that not only breaks the ground, but that gifts us with the steps to take in order to get to the other side, together.

Cherie Dimaline

Crosshairs is a blistering page-turner. One can describe it as dystopic fiction, but Catherine Hernandez is presenting us with something much more prescient to consider. The novel acts as a provocation and a challenge for readers to locate themselves. Crosshairs offers a glance into a world that is possible if we continue on a trajectory that is frightfully present. Most importantly, Crosshairs asks us what we will do to resist and build a better future when faced with such momentous and dangerous times.

Carrianne Leung

Every character has a moment to tell their story. Hernandez delivers beautiful and heartbreaking scenes in a story that is hard especially because of how close it feels to our present.

Booklist

Crosshairs made me shiver. It troubled my dreams. Still, I could not put down this dystopia. It was utterly compelling. Catherine Hernandez prophesies Canadian genocide against Queer, Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks. At the same time, she inspires the reader with her depiction of a resistance full of characters who—even in the face of hatred and complacency—show love, pride, endurance, courage, and insist on living to the very last breath.

Lawrence Hill

In Crosshairs . . . the distinction between dystopia and reality becomes increasingly imperceptible. . . underscor[ing] that what’s dystopian fiction for some is already a reality for others. . . . Crosshairs leaves readers with two promises. The first is that change is possible. If people with privilege can be motivated to take action against systemic oppression, souls can be saved and lives can be spared. The second promise is that without change, we are hurtling toward disaster. Consider this book a call to action. A demand for change, before it is too late.

Quill and Quire

"[Scarborough] is a town coloured by its people, brutal when it’s rough, comfortably home when it feels like it or when it doesn’t. And this is a story on the reckoning of privilege and the acceptance of difference."

The National Post

Hernandez goes deeper than most writers dare when it comes to the complexities of racial and cultural violences, unafraid to unpack the explicit and implicit prejudices that inform her characters' behaviours, white and racialized alike ... This is a crucial book for Toronto, and a shining example for writers concerned with the cultural tensions of the now."

Broken Pencil

Rooted from within the worldview and place it portrays, Scarborough is an intimate portrait of a community with all its nuances and desires deftly captured ... Brick by brick, life by life, Scarborough delivers an orchestral impact, one small, beautiful voice at a time.

Jury Citation

An engrossing read ... Hernandez sets us running down that subway corridor, anxious for what comes around the next corner. Heartbreak, to be sure. But also unexpected joys and big lessons. Highly recommended.

Out in Print

[Scarborough is] a celebration of community, a sensitive and compassionate portrayal of how lives are irrevocably changed, moment by moment, through small acts of kindness or cruelty. It’s a novel that deserves to be read widely.

Hamilton Review of Books

"Crosshairs is both unnervingly prescient and undeniably profound. A harrowing work that's as much a battle cry as a ballad for the erased, and we should all be listening."

New York Times bestselling author of A Darker Shad V.E. Schwab

In her dexterous debut, Catherine Hernandez powerfully centres the margins by interlacing narratives that spotlight the beauty that thrives beyond the big city."

Vivek Shraya

• Finalist for the City of Toronto Book Awards 2017
• Finalist for the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award 2018
• Finalist for the Half the World Global Literary Award 2017
• Finalist for the Trillium Award
• Finalist, Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading Evergreen Award 2018
• Longlisted for Canada Reads 2018
• A Globe & Mail, National Post, and Quill & Quire Best Book of the Year
• A Top Ten Audible Book 2017
• A CBC Books Writer to Watch 2017
• Queen's Reads Selection 2018

AWARDS FOR SCARBOROUGH

Scarborough is raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful ... it also gives voice to people whose stories are often unheard, making this an important book that deserves a wide audience.

Booklist

Scarborough marks the arrival of a fierce new voice in Canadian fiction. Hernandez has rendered one of the most vibrant portraits of contemporary suburbia I've yet encountered.

Jordan Tannahill

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