Now Watch This

Abstract

Now Watch This is exactly what its title expresses it to be. It's a call for attention, a summons for your eyes. More specifically, it's an in-progress novel set from the 1990s to the current year, 2024. It's the story of a millennial named Junior Pena. A man who's like that one smirky friend who nudges you before attempting a dangerous and/or questionable act—or maybe just an idiotic feat. It's narrated from Junior's point of view, with a voice that aims to be literary, colloquial, Californian, and Latino. In its pages, he searches the network of his memories for his formative trauma and discovers a critical source in a small Mexican pueblo in the 1970s. It's one man's attempt to cleanse himself and forgive all who've wronged him by confessing to the things that shame him. It's an examination of shame and its consequences. It's a deconstruction of self, masculinity, language, family, identity, sex, class, body image, and some other stuff too. But most importantly, it's a document of healing, an example of one man's honest attempt to heal himself with the instruments of memory and language.