Brando Skyhorse

Brando Skyhorse (born Brandon Kelly Ulloa) is an American author. He won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2011 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for his novel ''The Madonnas of Echo Park''.

Life

Skyhorse was born and raised in Echo Park, California and has degrees from Stanford University and from the MFA Writers' Workshop program at UC Irvine.

He shared the story of his complex ethnic identity development a 2014 NBC.com feature,John Mackley (June 26, 2014
Brando Skyhorse: The Native American Who Wasn't
NBCNews.com, accessed 20 Feb 2018 and later in an episode of the Snap Judgment podcast (#807 Born Identity; posted on March 24, 2017). He said that, through his childhood, his mother insisted they were Native Americans, and portrayed herself as a passionate activist for Native American rights. However, she later admitted this was not true: they were in fact both Mexican-American. She had adopted a Native identity after being abandoned by Skyhorse's father, partly because she "just don’t want to be another Mexican girl in eavily LatinoEcho Park", and to illustrate her belief that identity is a choice. Under his mother's assertive guidance, Skyhorse did things such as refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to protest the treatment of Native Americans. In his early teens, Skyhorse began suspecting his mother was lying about their Native American ancestry from his early teens, but she resisted his questions about it. He continued to claim a Native identity until her death in 1998, including on his application to Stanford University. He acknowledges feeling guilty and conflicted about this choice since then. Nonetheless, he also said that when he was 18, it would have been impossible for him to contradict his mother about their identity. He believes his story is an example of the complexity of racial and ethnic identity in the United States, and that it illustrates how adults affect their children's development of identity.

Skyhorse was a professional book editor prior to the success of ''Madonnas'', which he wrote under the title ''Amexicans''. Skyhorse Publishing, where he worked as an editor, is named after him.

As of February 2018, Skyhorse's personal website indicates he teaches English literature at Indiana University Bloomington.

Works

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References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Skyhorse, Brando
Hispanic and Latino American novelists
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
American writers of Mexican descent
Stanford University alumni
University of California, Irvine alumni
Indiana University Bloomington faculty
Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winners
21st-century American male writers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)