Toys Made of Rock
José B. González was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and lived there until the age of eight, at which point he emigrated to the United States and was reunited with his parents, who had left to escape their country’s civil turmoil and to find work.
"The poems in Toys Made of Rock pair experiments in form with explorations in identity. The lyric result of this offers inroads into the wide landscape of America. González brings us izote flowers and caskets, tumor fruit and the minimum wage, voices from the neighborhood, and portraits of love. It is a wide-ranging journey from one country to another, from lost childhoods and hard childhoods to the politically charged world of adulthood. González is a storyteller and truth-teller, a writer who sees that which must be written, must be sung, must be witnessed.