The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria

Assimilation is founded on surrender. You can be killed, exiled, ostracized, imprisoned, or gagged against your will, but to be assimilated, first you must be broken. And despite the relentless canon of monomyths meant to assuage us, we’re all broken. That’s the main thing human society is for: to make you say “no más.” And then “whatever you say.” But sometimes you unsurrender. Sometimes you’re a concert pianist who defies death by uploading your soul into your piano. Sometimes you draw your mother’s ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall where she was executed. Look, it’s your fault that a horn started growing out of the center of your forehead, but maybe you can still make things right. And when you can’t--when you’re too weak to end the affair, too much in love to be moral--well, there are always other timelimes, where you can ask all those better versions of yourself to help you do the right thing. Of course, they’re all just as flawed and horny as you are.
Poignant by way of funny, philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are hardly a guide to anything, unless you’re a panda-breeder looking for tips or a border patroller trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Instead, they’re ebos, using hair and blood and spit and rum to push back against assimilation. Each story is a prayer for self-sovereignty.