About the Book
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 labour 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.
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.
Review :
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.
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.
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, sould can be saved and lives can be spared. The second promise is that without change, we are hurtling towards disaster. Consider this book a call to action. A demand for change before it's too late.
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.
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.
A beautiful, unapologetic, and unwatered-down...dystopian [novel] that holds a sobering mirror up to our own world
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.
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.
Hernandez is unrelenting in her portrayal of the regular violence, assault and abuses faced by these Otherized people in 'civil societies.' She excels in her ability to show the ease of even the most brazen fascism and the pervasiveness of the feelings and scenarios that elicit its subsequent rise.
Hernandez's storytelling throughout is compelling, and she builds tension and intrigue as the story moves forward, leaving the reader ravenous for the outcome. . . A rare and wonderful and formidable feat.
Catherine Hernandez's sharp-eyed, queer dystopian fantasy is no gentle wake-up call. It is a blaring fire alarm and a call to arms against authoritarianism, white supremacy, and transphobia.
