Name: Art Is Everything: A Novel
Author: Murray, Yxta Maya
ISBN: 9780810142923

Available as an ebook at:
OverDrive

Art Is Everything: A Novel

by Yxta Maya Murray

Northwestern University Press, 2021
Paper: 978-0-8101-4292-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-4293-0
Library of Congress Classification PS3563.U832A89 2021
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.54

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In her funny, idiosyncratic, and propulsive new novel, Art Is Everything, Yxta Maya Murray offers us a portrait of a Chicana artist as a woman on the margins. L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, a wealthy and pragmatic actuary named Xōchitl. Everything seems under control: Amanda’s grumpy father is living peacefully in Koreatown; Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and, once she gets her NEA, she’s going to film a groundbreaking autocritical documentary in Mexico.

But then everything starts to fall apart when Xōchitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and she endures a sexual assault. What happens to an artist when her emotional support vanishes along with her feelings of safety and her finances? Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat freakouts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and SmugMug streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything shows us the painful but joyous development of a mid-career artist whose world implodes just as she has a breakthrough.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

YXTA MAYA MURRAY is a writer and law professor living in Los Angeles. Her novels include The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped, The King’s Gold: An Old World Novel of Adventure, and The Queen Jade: A Novel. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has won a Whiting Writer's Award and an Art Writer's Grant, and she has been a finalist for the ASME Award in Fiction. Her art criticism can be found in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery, and other periodicals.

REVIEWS

“In Amanda Ruiz, Yxta Maya Murray has created a character that is fresh and sassy and unlike any I’ve encountered in recent fiction. Through inventive and stylized prose rife with wit and intelligence, we witness her triumphs and heartbreaks just as Amanda is on the verge of a major creative breakthrough while her personal life begins to unravel. What results is a portrait of an artist whose tenacity and passion fill the pages of this ebullient novel, penned by a gifted writer whose imagination knows no limits.” —Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime
— -

"Amanda Ruiz romps through an art infused life of love, loss, and redemption, inviting the reader on a wild, exhilarating ride." —Carla Trujillo, author of Faith and Fat Chances

"This book is as creative as its main character, Chicana artist Amanda Ruiz, who endures several life-changing events while on the verge of breaking through." — Ms. Magazine

"The novel evolves and transforms the idea that art is everything until it encompasses a state of being wherein art is the undeniable core of an artist’s existence and of all of the actions of their life." —Foreword Reviews— -

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. I Didn’t Even Know These Existed
2. A Struggle That Probably Won’t Pay Off In The End
3. Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Insisted On Taking This Trip
4. Hey Can I Come Back Home Now
5. I Didn’t See That One Coming
6. Weird Social Media Stuff You Do When Your Dad Dies
7. This New Job Isn’t That Great
8. I’m Not Sure If I Should Have Pressed Send
9. Is This Healing Me or is It Propaganda
10. I Am Trying To Care About This But It’s Not Really Working
11. Unlobstering
12. It’s Not Stalking, It’s Just Finding Somebody’s Number and Calling Them on the Phone
13. Crucifixion and Happiness
14. Authenticity Culture is Dumb
15. The Science of Invisibility
16. Private Language
17. Hope In a Phone
18. It’s Fine to Be Edited by Your Gallerist
19. Maybe This Will Make Me Some Money
20. Crushing It
21. I Don’t Think I’m Handling This Very Well
22. The Disease of the Learned
23. This is Bad
24. The Sucking One
25. Yeah Getting a Job is Probably a Good Idea
26. Björk’s Kids Seem OK
27. The Cry It Out Method
28. Own Your Emotion
29. Make Something Out of It
30. Arte Povera
Sources
List of Illustrations

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.

See other books on: Art criticism | Artists | Lesbian | LGBTQ+ | Murray, Yxta Maya
See other titles from Northwestern University Press

Nearby on shelf for American literature / Individual authors / 1961-2000: