“On Remembering My Friends is an honest and tender look at friendships, as well as romantic and parental relationships that question conventional ideas of masculinity. Delgado shows us how the largeness of small kindnesses can last for a long time. This book is a gift of hope. And we don’t see these stories often enough, from anyone, but especially from Chamorro people in the continental U.S.—as Delgado makes achingly clear—trying to connect here to a geographical and cultural homeland that has become abstract. This shit is great—it hits on a lot of levels of love—not just love between these characters, but also we can tell Delgado wrote these characters with love, which to me means he saw and wrote them as full humans with complicated spectrums of being in the world. That’s some gracious shit and I appreciate it. And the book is hilarious!”—Steven Dunn, contest judge and author of water & power
“On Remembering My Friends is an honest and tender look at friendships, as well as romantic and parental relationships that question conventional ideas of masculinity. Delgado shows us how the largeness of small kindnesses can last for a long time. This book is a gift of hope. And we don’t see these stories often enough, from anyone, but especially from Chamorro people in the continental U.S.—as Delgado makes achingly clear—trying to connect here to a geographical and cultural homeland that has become abstract. This shit is great—it hits on a lot of levels of love—not just love between these characters, but also we can tell Delgado wrote these characters with love, which to me means he saw and wrote them as full humans with complicated spectrums of being in the world. That’s some gracious shit and I appreciate it. And the book is hilarious!”
—Steven Dunn, contest judge and author of water & power
“Throughout this powerful novella, Delgado crafts a narrative that spirals between the present and the past in order to tell the story of Cody Taitano, a mixed-heritage Pacific Islander and Native American who grew up in upstate New York. His voice drew me in immediately: humorous, self-deprecating, and immersed in pop culture. This story, about memory and manhood, friendship and fatherhood, is an exciting and necessary addition to the canon of Indigenous literature.”
—Craig Santos Perez, author of from unincorporated territory [åmot] and National Book Award winner
“Francisco Delgado masterfully carves out a slice of life via SAT vocabulary words, a gig slinging fast food burgers, a Weezer CD, and friends ritually speculating if this will be the year The Rock wins the Royal Rumble. There are certain components of teenage life that fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces to shape the picture of who we once were and who, at heart, we’ll always be. Here, Delgado gathers those disparate parts in a raucous, gritty, and ultimately joyful novella.”
—Michael Chin, author of This Year’s Ghost and Stories Wrestling Can Tell
“In On Remembering My Friends, a scratched Pinkerton CD becomes a time machine: we are pulled back into 1999, into the excitement and yearning of teenage friendship, and then volleyed forward once again to see the true weight of these connections. There is danger and uncertainty looming at all times—what happens if a cop stops you, what happens after high school, what happens when the clock strikes midnight, what happens after the pandemic—but there is also such a sweetness here, such a gentle dexterity to Delgado’s prose, that you’re left with an overwhelming ache of optimism. This is a beautiful book, and it will stick with me for a long time.”
—Emily Costa, author of Until It Feels Right
