(Ebook) The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Varela ISBN 9781662601071, 1662601077

(Ebook) The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Varela ISBN 9781662601071, 1662601077

"A searing collection about gentrification, racism, & sexuality. [...] Varela provides invaluable insight on the ways stress impacts the characters’ lives, & how they persevere. Readers will be floored."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "A. Varela is one of my favorite short story writers... An iconoclast of tenderness, a compass in the storm this life always is." —Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) "The People Who Report More Stress dissects the minutiae of relationships to self, city, space, & sensibility so we don’t numbly succumb to the 'structured order of things.'"—Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (The Freezer Door) The People Who... is a coll. of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body & the body politic. In Midtown-West Side Story, Álvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, & the restaurant’s regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs. The Man in 512 tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings & goings of an affluent co-op building, all the while teaching the children Spanish through Selena’s music catalog. Comrades follows a queer man with radical politics who just ended a long-term relationship & is now on the hunt for a life partner. With little tolerance for political moderates, his series of speed dates devolve into awkward confrontations that leave him wondering if his approach is the correct one. A collection of humorous, sexy, & highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic & interpersonal racism, & class conflict from the author of The Town of Babylon, The People Who... deftly & poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems & solutions to our society’s …