Diego Gómez Pickering He served as Consul General of Mexico in New York for three years.
This period coincides, for better or for worse, with some years of the presidency of Donald Trump.
And since his arrival at this diplomatic assignment, this meticulous Mexican author recorded many anecdotes and events during his stay in the Big Apple.
The result is Letters from New York: Chronicles from the Tomb of the Empire, an essential compendium for all Spanish speakers who want to understand the dynamics of the ‘City that never sleeps’.
The passages of the text have a double reading: an anecdotal level that tells the story in a candid way and a deeper one, which tries to decipher the complex metropolis.
Curiously, Gómez Pickering’s stories travel in reverse chronological order: it begins in April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, and ends in July 2016, coinciding with the beginning of what would be an infamous presidential period for immigrants in the United States.
Throughout his journey through the city, the author becomes a true New Yorker: he travels from Coney Island to Lincoln Center; but he also stops to visit the Cayuga Center and the Trump Tower.
And as Carmen Boullosa mentions in the prologue of the book: “Gómez Pickering draws a portrait-map of that city.”
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