Institut Ramon LLull

A sixteen-year-old boy enters the hospital room where his father lies in a coma, surrounded by machines keeping him alive. He knows this is the moment to say goodbye. It’s also his last chance to tell his father all the secrets he’s kept from him: his true identity, and the fear and shame he’s always felt in the presence of this now-dying man. Jo era un noi is a book about grief, in which the narrator finally opens up about everything left unsaid during his childhood and teenage years —addressing his father, and in the process, himself. It’s a journey of selfdiscovery, told through scenes from the boy’s family history: his grandfather’s move from Galicia to Barcelona, the SEAT factory, a flat crumbling from structural decay, a family holiday. It’s through these fragments that he is finally able to grasp who he is and embrace his sexuality.

A raw and courageous text that talks openly about love, hate, class, desire and fear— and breaks the chain of stifling, oppressive masculinity passed down from grandfather to father, father to son.