I Have No Mouth And I Must Sing

Hello hello!!! Thank you for enjoying ABM and for being interested in Tell Me How I Die!!!!! Its a book for gay Mexicans so I really hope you like it :') <3

First of all, thank you so much for this question! I've been genuinely shocked by the positivity around it! I planned for a drop off in engagement and maybe even readership (and made peace with that!), so it's been terrifying seeing how much this book has caught people's attention. Especially over on Insta! Every post about it gets me like 100 new followers. I have legitimately no idea what is hooking people to it.

But anyway! Yeah I can talk about what books are inspiring it! I don't mind because I actually consider myself in conversation with these books. So here is the list:

RF Kuang's Katabasis — the obvious one! This one is about two PhD students that descend to Hell for a recommendation letter. That said, Tell Me How I Die is not satirical and thematically more like Kuang's Babel, but taken in a very different direction.

Micah Nemerever's These Violent Delights — the foundational text of "gay toxic relationship among students (that think they are very smart) that leads to violence"; I adore this book! This is the best dark academia out there, in my opinion. Mr. Nemerever, if you see this, please ignore me.

Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo — the founding text of Mexican magical realism (or just speculative fiction, if you want to be pedantic). The book is a non-chronological, surreal story about a man who visits a town populated by dead people, still acting like they did in life. I take a lot of my "land of the dead" from Pedro Paramo

Brandon Taylor's Real Life — a book I just recently discovered about a gay, Black PhD student in a majority-white program, his relationship with a "straight" guy, and the power dynamics of academia. Its really good

Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands / La Frontera — nonfiction but part of Tell Me How I Die is just me trying to update the rather dated theories in this book tbh

Dennis Cooper in general. I'm not as horror-oriented as him, but he really pushes me to write gay characters that are horrible and violent. I also find that a lot of the horror of his work comes from (performing?) masculinity, and I've really let that guide my hand with this book sksks

Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World — a book that treats crossing the border like crossing into Mictlan, the Mesoamerican afterlife (a depiction I have complicated feelings about)

Octavio Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude — another nonfiction, but Tell Me How I Die was directly inspired by this line of it :) ->

“Death, like life, is not transferable. If we do not die as we lived, it is because the life we lived was not really ours: it did not belong to us, just as the bad death that kills us does not belong to us. Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are.” // "La muerte es intransferible, como la vida. Si no morimos como vivimos es porque realmente no fue nuestra la vida que vivimos: no nos pertenecía, como no nos pertenece la mala suerte que nos mata. Dime cómo mueres y te diré quién eres."

Now, for (non-book) aesthetics/vibes, I took a lot from the very famous and very very good Mexican film Macario (1960)! And, as I mentioned in somewhat of a silly post on Insta, I took inspiration from Killing Stalking (yes really!), Kill Your Darlings (2013) (im sorry i just love this movie), and Mouthwashing (the game).

This is all I got! Tell Me How I Die is pretty unique though. (I'm not 100% certain but I think I might be the first guy ever to eroticize Keohane's asymmetric interdependence theory in a book, and Vicente/Lazaro are such.... specifically weird guys). You know, one thing about Angels that makes me very proud is that its ultimately such a unique story, so I'm glad that I can still write other stories, post-Angels, that make me go "unc still got it 🙏"

Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!

Transcript below the cut.

Black Deaf Culture Through the Lens of History (BASL and ASL-centric)

Understanding Deaf Culture by Paddy Ladd (which can also be found on archive.org)

Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities

the British Deaf Association website

directory for Deaf Australia’s “Our Deaf Ways” video podcast (presented in Auslan with audio from an interpreter and accurate closed captioning for all episodes)

The Irish Deaf Community by Patrick A. Matthews

Breaking the Silence: The Education of the Deaf in Ireland, 1816-1996

the Canadian Deaf Culture Center website

History of Hawai'i Sign Language and Hawai'i Deaf People by Barbara Earth, with Linda Lambrecht

Two more resources:

I commissioned my twin to draw the boys because she's actually the artist in the family and I thought they would look amazing in her style.

I was so right. I sent her the shittiest sketches and wrote a concepts and told her I wanted these two separate designs that kind of interact with the monocane mist -> to go on a shirt <3

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