This article is part of Palabras, the Latin Post Latino Author Series.

Director of the graduate writing program at The New School by day, and routine attendee of readings and publishing events by night, exhausted author Luis Jaramillo fashioned his personal and elegant collection, "The Doctor's Wife," during the wee hours of dusk .

But, thankfully, he's a morning person.

The author having already won the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest, Jaramillo's "The Doctor's Wife" has been named an Oprah Book of the Week, and was honored as one of National Public Radio's Best Books of 2012.

Jaramillo was born and raised in Salinas, a relatively small and fairly segregated town in Northern California. His German/Danish mother, an ESL teacher, and his Mexican-American father, a lawyer from El Paso, Texas, raised him with an understanding of both cultures, but the ethnically divided town of Salinas posed a challenge to the writer's sense of self. Being Mexican and white, he often felt as if he was straddling two identities, as if he was neither and both. So, Jaramillo turned to literature. While looking to articulate the existence of "otherness" during his formative years, Jaramillo became curious about people and books, and discovered the fun of "becoming a character, a different person."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah" was one of the many books that stuck with Jaramillo. He was taken by the novel's approach to race and class, and its take on what it meant to be an American. Smart and funny, it's a work that contributed to Jaramillo's understanding of the written word; much like his father's attention to justice evoked his commitment to social justice.

Like author and poet Grace Paley, Jaramillo believes "there isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money." In an interview with Latin Post, Jaramillo explained that power, security and love are all themes that are frequented, and those things are rooted in money and blood.

"People need to work to get money, and in the books I like, people have jobs. The stories I am drawn to write are about these things: work, economics, and family, often my family. 'The Doctor's Wife' is, in large part, about how we make mythologies out of our family stories," said Jaramillo.

"The Doctor's Wife" primarily focuses on the Anglo side of the author's family. However, there is a character like Jaramillo who enters during the second half of the book, and there are several pieces that feature a character like his father, who was devoutly committed to civil rights. But, moreover, the book is a series of moments that capture tragedy, loss, expectancy and complexity, crossing the bridge between memoir, non-fiction and fiction.

"I was thinking as I was writing that I was telling a story about the demographic and political changes that have happened in the United States over the past 50 years. In the 1970s, my German-Danish mother, her brother and her sister married a Mexican-American, a Native American, and a Jewish man, integrating the family in a pretty dramatic way," said Jaramillo. "This integration was not always easy -- much like the integration of the United States. My story is maybe not the most typical 'Latino' story you might think of. But one thing I've been thinking about is how Latino culture is so heterogeneous. To portray it accurately, we have to show its many faces."

We could be on the edge of a boom in Latino literature, according to Jaramillo, who says the proof is written in the labor force statistics that state that 6.6 percent of Hispanics are in publishing -- a number which is higher than other non-white groups. It's also reflected in the population, by which Hispanics claim 17 percent.

Learn more about Luis Jaramillo at his website.

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