Overview

Winner of the inaugural 2024 Sarabande Prize in the Essay, selected by Alexander Chee and excerpted in Adi Magazine Lucky Creatures is a bold and playful collection about rebuilding life after migration, queerness and the transnational experience for readers of Ocean Vuong'sThe Emperor of Gladness In his debut essay collection, award-winning Filipino-Kiwi essayist Joseph Trinidad explores the lessons of his grandmother's chicken farm and his grandfather's lucky fish, Ara the golden arowana; the vibrancy of his home country and its rites of passage such astuli, beauty pageants, and national Boy Scout jamborees; the contradictions of Aotearoa-New Zealand, his adopted country, which demands his family's labour and insists that they leave their mother tongues at the border; and his own journey of coming out, along with the hard work of actualization that follows as he and his partner grapple with the desire to have a baby.Inspired by the creatures of Filipino folktales and immigrant touchstones such as FaceTime and ""that one cousin from the States,"" Lucky Creatures answers every immigrant's question: ""Was the move worth it?"" Each resulting essay is an unforgettable exploration of life as a queer, Brown, transnational hybrid-filled with warmth, grace, and humour of the lucky creatures who can hear the call of home.

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9781956046618

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Reviews

""There's an entirely original voice in these essays that seems to me created out of a tremendous intimacy. And I say this because I almost thought of it as gently done, at first, but there is certainly bravura, honesty, love, family, horniness, jealousy, and yes pains and longings that are harder to name and are maybe never named. Trinidad is making space on the page for the people in the stories he is telling, their languages, their lives, the money they earned and the money they didn't, the heartbreak and the connections both."" - Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

""well-crafted debut collection of linked essays [...] Astute, intimate, and engaging."" --Kirkus Reviews ""affecting debut essay collection...Readers will expect good things from Trinidad to come."" --Publishers Weekly ""There's an entirely original voice in these essays that seems to me created out of a tremendous intimacy. And I say this because I almost thought of it as gently done, at first, but there is certainly bravura, honesty, love, family, horniness, jealousy, and yes pains and longings that are harder to name and are maybe never named. Trinidad is making space on the page for the people in the stories he is telling, their languages, their lives, the money they earned and the money they didn't, the heartbreak and the connections both."" --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel ""From Gina Apostol to Oliver de la Paz and dozens of other voices besides, Filipino-American literature is in a place of rich burgeoning. How thrilling for American readers, then, to know more about the work being done by the writers of the broader Filipino diaspora. Writing from New Zealand, Joseph Trinidad is part of this marvelous diasporic literature. His formally intrepid collection of essays, Lucky Creatures, brings new eyes and a new heart to the old stories of leaving and losing, becoming and belonging. From the everyday surrealisms of childhood in one country to the ""sustainable contradictions"" of being in a new country, Trinidad proposes that maybe the truest home is in art, in imagination and language and their capacity to envision the fullness of a motley self. Lucky Creatures left me feeling exultant and recognized."" --Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones ""Joseph Trinidad's Lucky Creatures burns with aliveness and originality. Trinidad writes about the places and people he loves with generosity, candor, insight, and a sharp attention to the hilarity and heartbreak of life. [...] Trinidad is an innovative, bold voice who moves, entertains, and surprises me with his brilliance. He writes with care and generosity towards those creatures lucky enough to be written about."" --Grace Talusan, author of Body Papers ""In Lucky Creatures, Joseph Trinidad has written brilliant new essays, as moving as they are funny. A coming-of-age narrative full of duwende, lucky fish, and FaceTime conversations with the dead, this collection gives us lessons on love and attention, while also exploring what is worth keeping, what is worth letting go of, and what is inevitably lost, broken, or transformed through the process of migration. Lucky Creatures is delightful, heartfelt, and dazzlingly wise."" --Marianne Chan, author of Leaving Biddle City

""There's an entirely original voice in these essays that seems to me created out of a tremendous intimacy. And I say this because I almost thought of it as gently done, at first, but there is certainly bravura, honesty, love, family, horniness, jealousy, and yes pains and longings that are harder to name and are maybe never named. Trinidad is making space on the page for the people in the stories he is telling, their languages, their lives, the money they earned and the money they didn't, the heartbreak and the connections both."" --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel ""From Gina Apostol to Oliver de la Paz and dozens of other voices besides, Filipino-American literature is in a place of rich burgeoning. How thrilling for American readers, then, to know more about the work being done by the writers of the broader Filipino diaspora. Writing from New Zealand, Joseph Trinidad is part of this marvelous diasporic literature. His formally intrepid collection of essays, Lucky Creatures, brings new eyes and a new heart to the old stories of leaving and losing, becoming and belonging. From the everyday surrealisms of childhood in one country to the ""sustainable contradictions"" of being in a new country, Trinidad proposes that maybe the truest home is in art, in imagination and language and their capacity to envision the fullness of a motley self. Lucky Creatures left me feeling exultant and recognized."" --Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones

Author Information

Joseph Trinidad is a Filipino writer who lives in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington. His work has been featured in Landfall, North & South, Te Papa, The Spinoff, Turbine | Kapohau, and Migrant Zine Collective. He is the winner of the 2023 Adam Foundation Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2023 Asian Ink from Playmarket.

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