Finding Querencia: Essays from In-Between

by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Winner, 2022 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award (Autobiography/Memoir category)

With its roots in the Spanish verb querer —“to want, to love”—the term querencia has been called untranslatable but has come to mean a place of safety and belonging, that which we yearn for when we yearn for home. In this striking essay collection , Harrison Candelaria Fletcher shows that querencia is also a state of the peace that arises when we reconcile who we are. A New Mexican of mixed Latinx and white ethnicity, Candelaria Fletcher ventures into the fault lines of culture, landscape, and spirit to discover the source of his lifelong hauntings. Writing in the persona of coyote, New Mexican slang for “mixed,” he explores the hyphenated elements within himself, including his whiteness. Blending memory, imagination, form, and language, each essay spirals outward to investigate, accept, and embrace hybridity. Ultimately, Finding Querencia offers a new vocabulary of mixed-ness, a way to reconcile the crosscurrents of self and soul.

180 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2022

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

These little essays and vignettes kept me musing during my in-between times. This small book fit into my oversized purse, so I'd often go a few days before reading the next selection, and I always enjoyed that little break. It's refreshing to seek another's perceptions of indentity, family, joys, frustrations, and -- always -- the place of the heart. Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Latine: so many terms develop, so the search for these lessons among ourselves is critical as we learn more of who we are and who we'll become. While some of these reflections didn't enchant me, most did.

[Angela Brink · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this for one of my classes and it changed my life, honestly. i believe the connection with place and identity was beautiful. his experience as a young boy turned into a man and how every small detail of his identity transpired into who he is is beautiful.

[MaryEllen Sanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will read this book again. And probably again, still. I was moved by the writing and the deep dive into memory and self: beyond the merely sentimental or emotional. Candelaria-Fletcher's writing moves. It is sometimes serpentine, sometimes stalking, sometimes caught by the current. It pushed at things in my head/heart/writing mind – using words as keys themselves, words that can hardly be labeled as parts of speech, but rather parts of memory, parts of heart. I savored the format he used: with space to breathe, he presents questions and pieces and lists and food and photos and definitions. The setting in "in-between" New Mexico is alluring without being emblematic, and throughout the book, [what I assume to be the] author's own art and archival photos punctuate chapters, adding a visual dimension that adds to the poignant depth of the narrative. Bravo!

[Booksandcoffeemx · Rating 4 out of 5]

𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨!

Wow, this is a little book with so much meaning, it’s a book to read slowly and savour it. A thought-provoking and beautifully written collection of essays about life, identity, belonging and acceptance.

Thank you The Ohio State University Press for this gifted copy.

𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮 by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher released April 15, 2022.

https://www.instagram.com/booksandcof...

[Oona · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I bought this at or during AWP one year. I don't know another book that comes so close to what I wanted to read on this subject, which hits near to home without being an exact match. I keep coming back to it and rereading first the beginning and then the end. It feels endlessly suspended between them, in the "weightless mid-air in-between."

Strange, elusive, and yet so relatable.

[Anna Snader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll just be over here wading in these deep and soulful lyrics…

[Vahni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out my review of Finding Querencia for Sweet:

https://sweetlit.org/finding-querenci...