Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

El Paso, 1987. Ari is fifteen, angry in ways he can't name, with a father who fought in Vietnam and doesn't talk about it and a brother in prison no one talks about either. Dante is also fifteen, the son of two professors, talkative where Ari is closed off, certain about things Ari has never let himself consider. They become friends at the public pool. Then they become something Ari doesn't have words for and isn't sure he wants words for. Sáenz writes Mexican American identity, masculinity, family, and desire with a poet's patience — there is no external villain forcing anyone toward a confrontation, no single dramatic coming-out scene. The obstacle is entirely internal: Ari's slow, halting, often self-sabotaging journey toward understanding what he feels and why he's spent so much energy not feeling it. The parents in this book love their sons completely and are still slow to find the language for who their sons are — and Sáenz holds both truths without making either one cancel the other. Multiple Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Award winner. Frequently challenged and banned. The most literary and most patient entry in the Be Yourself bundle — where some books in this collection are about claiming an identity quickly and joyfully, this one is about the slow internal work of getting there.