I’ll Give You a Reason explores the lives of immigrants and first-generation Americans searching for their American Dream in the Ironbound, an ethnic enclave and immigrant haven in Newark, New Jersey, a place once best known for its high murder rate. This story collection illustrates the complicated beauty of Newark and the lives of its diverse residents. The characters in this short story collection tread the waters of race, political unrest, sexuality and intimacy, religion, body image, Blackness, colorism, and gentrification, searching for their identities and a sliver of joy and connection.
Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason, forthcoming in 2024 from the Feminist Press. A Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, her work has also received support from Tin House and has appeared in American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is an assistant fiction editor for the New Orleans Review and is working on a novel.
