Letters to Young Carlos by Carlos Valenzuela

Finalist, Best Fiction: Novella — 2021 International Book Awards. Finalist in LGBTQ Fiction and in Multicultural Fiction — 2021 Best Book Awards. He was an old man before he found the words. In a quiet room at Casa Alegre, Carlos Casavantes fills a yellow legal pad with letters to a boy who will never read them — himself, decades back, crossing the border to school each morning and coming home with a secret he had no name for. Douglas, Arizona on one side. Agua Prieta, Sonora on the other. A fence between them, and a boy learning to move through both worlds without being seen in either. He practiced in the bathroom mirror: lowering his voice a notch, walking so his hips would not give him away, laughing with his mouth almost closed. Nobody taught him this. He worked it out alone, the way he learned English — late, and then so well no one could find the accent underneath. There is a dog named Popi. A record spinning in a basement. A navy robe that still smells, faintly and impossibly, of motor oil and of Jesse. There is love, and heartbreak, and a betrayal that takes a lifetime to set down. Letters to Young Carlos moves between the old man's letters and the boy's story, each answering the other across a lifetime. It is a novel about the invisible handicap — growing up certain that something is wrong with you, and spending years finding out that nothing was. If you were ever that child, in whatever town, under any name, whether or not you had a word for it — some of this mail is yours. Revised and Expanded Edition, 2026