TITLE: BLUE LIGHT HOURS
AUTHOR: BRUNA DANTAS LOBATO
PUBLISH DATE: OCT. 2024
Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy of this book.
This was a quiet book. Lobato takes the everyday things we do with our loved ones and scatters it across time and space. In this story, it’s scattered across two continents between a mother and daughter who miss each other terribly, but who are growing into themselves against the blue light of their computer screens.
Lobato’s descriptions of dorm rooms, ramen, and other international students does a fine job of showing the thin line that we straddle between who we are and who we are becoming. She does this through nightly conversations with her mother over Skype. Conversations that welcome the reader to see the myriad of imperceptible ways that young immigrant students become Americanized through college-campus culture, where there’s all kinds of people, foods, clubs, and classes to choose from.
The themes in Blue Light Hours will be instantly relatable to any immigrant student who has left home to study abroad in America or any first-generation American who has ever gone off to college.
It’s a reflection on the excitement and embarrassment of learning something new and becoming that new thing, while balancing it against the familiarity of the life you've left behind.