Have You Read This? Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

As a librarian, the desire to categorize has become, at this point, etched into my DNA. Alphabetical order, Dewey Decimal, “Nothing comes before something,” and other methods of putting things in the proper order is almost soothing in its simplicity. Defining a genre, on the other hand, is not so neat and tidy. Writers are now taking more risks, blending genres, upsetting traditional tropes, and books are becoming less easy to categorize. I’m personally okay with that if the outcome is books like Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias. His book is a blend of crime, lyrical poetry, and supernatural horror he has dubbed “barrio-noir.”

The book doesn’t have a straight-ahead, tightly focused narrative. Rather, Iglesias uses a mosaic narrative, presenting character studies of mothers, sons, criminals, and even ghosts to tell individual stories of need, of revenge, of horrible circumstances, and of determination to find better. I had the privilege of hearing Iglesias read a section from this book and hearing him read it, and his passion that was evident as he read, gave me a sense of how beautiful and meaningful his choice of words is, particularly how he blends Spanish and English while delivering beautiful descriptions and soaring sentences in both languages (Honestly, I only had four spread-apart semesters of Spanish and only recognize a few words, but I understood enough to get the gist thanks to the context he provided). However, understanding Spanish isn’t a requirement; one could read enough to see how Iglesias uses language to paint pictures in the mind both visceral and beautiful.

It might seem pretentious of Iglesias to name his own genre, but there is literally nothing out there that’s like him, and if anyone deserves to be their own genre, it’s him. Much like Joe Lansdale, whose sentence structure and turns of phrase are uniquely his, Iglesias has blended all his influences, all his loves, his observances of the human condition, and created something that no one else can copy. While there might not be a barrio-noir section in your local bookstore, it still pays to get to know this genre through its sole practitioner, Mr. Gabino Iglesias.