by Zinzi Clemmons (Department of English)

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor — someone, or something, to love.

In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. 

by Maceo Montoya (Department of Chicana/o/x Studies)

Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces (University of Nevada Press, April 2021), is a satirical novel about a Mexican American artist's struggle to create great works. It includes 50 drawings by the author.

by Maceo Montoya (Department of Chicana/o/x Studies)

In this novella, a short and bookish half-Mexican doctoral student returns to his hometown of Woodland, California, and tries to reconnect with Lupita Valdez, the girl he worshipped in high school. First he must come to terms with her three hulking brothers and his own identity. 

by Lucy Corin (Department of English)

At the outset of the 2008 financial crisis, Em has a dependable, dull marketing job generating reports of vague utility while she anxiously waits to hear news of her sister, Ad, who has gone missing — again. 

The story that swirls around Em moves through several perspectives and voices. There is Frank, the tart-tongued, failing manager at her office; Jack, the man with whom Frank has had a love affair for decades; Em and Ad’s eccentric parents who live in a house that is perpetually being built; and Tasio, the young man from Chiapas who works for them and falls in love with Ad. Through them, the author portrays porousness and breakdown in individuals and families, in economies and political systems, in architecture, technology and even in language itself.

by Pam Houston (Department of English)

Pam Houston, an "early master of the art of rendering fiercely independent, brilliant women in love with the wrong men" (Sarah Norris, Barnes & Noble Review), delivers a novel that whisks us from one breathtaking precipice to the next. 

Along the way, we unravel the story of Pam (a character not unlike the author), a fearless traveler aiming to leave her metaphorical baggage behind as she seeks a comfort zone in the air. With the help of a loyal cast of friends, body workers and a new partner who helps her to be at home, she finally finds something like ground under her feet.

by Pam Houston (Department of English)

This is the story of a woman, Rae, and her dog, Dante, a wolfhound who teaches "his human" that love is stronger than fear (the dog has always known this). 

Dante is the catalyst for change in other characters as well, and they step forward with their narratives: Rae's house-tender; her therapist; two veterinarians; and an anxiety-ridden actor, Howard, who turns out to be as stalwart as Dante himself.

Here, dogs and humans are simply equal creatures, looking to connect and holding on for dear life when they do. 

By Naomi Williams (M.F.A. in creative writing alum)

In 1785, the Lapérouse expedition left Brest with two frigates, more than two hundred men, and overblown ideals and expectations, in a brave attempt to circumnavigate the globe for science and the glory of France. This astonishingly inventive novel charts the course of their adventure.

Deeply grounded in historical fact but refracted through a powerful imagination, Naomi J. Williams's Landfalls follows the exploits and heartbreaks not only of the men on the ships but also of the people affected by the voyage — natives and other Europeans the explorers encountered, loved ones left waiting at home, and those who survived and remembered the expedition later. By turns comic, elegiac, and profound, Landfalls is an absorbing tale of the high seas and the world on the cusp of a new era.

by Melinda Moustakis (M.A. in creative writing alum)

Anchorage, 1956. When Marie and Lawrence first lock eyes at the Moose Lodge, they are immediately drawn together. But when they decide to marry, days later, they are more in love with the prospect of homesteading than anything else. 

For Lawrence, his parcel of 150 acres is an opportunity to finally belong in a world that has never delivered on its promise. For Marie, the land is an escape from the empty future she sees spinning out before her, and a risky bet is better than none at all. But over the next few years, as they work the land in an attempt to secure a deed to their homestead, they must face everything they don’t know about each other. 

Maria Kuznetsova (M.F.A. in creative writing alum)

Larissa is a stubborn, brutally honest woman in her 80s, tired of her home in Kiev, Ukraine — tired of everything really, except for her beloved granddaughter, Natasha. 

When Natasha asks her grandmother to tell the story of her family’s Soviet wartime escape from the Nazis in Kiev, she reluctantly agrees. Larissa recounts the nearly three-year period when she fled with her family to a factory town in the Ural Mountains where they faced starvation, a cholera outbreak, a tragic suicide, and where she was torn in her affections for two brothers from a wealthy family. 

Neither Larissa nor Natasha can anticipate how loudly these lessons of the past will echo in their present moments.

Shayne Langford, a lecturer in the Department of English in the College of Letters and Science, won the Maurice Prize for Fiction for his unpublished novel, which he's been working on since his days as an undergraduate at UC Davis. John Lescroart, who started the prize, called Langford's manuscript “dark and powerful.”

The American Dream as both idea and ideal, for all its complications, has had an undeniably powerful role in shaping values and aspirations in the U.S. and far beyond its borders. We spoke with faculty and students in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis who represent a wealth of knowledge and perspectives that help us think about American society’s past, present and continuing potential.