Brando Skyhorse wrote a fantastical book, a complex tale of intrigue in which a son is raised as an American Indian when he is actually Mexican American. The riveting plot reveals a mother who is continually trying to provide a father for her son though she tries to kill him—twice. As the scenes unravel, readers are left incredulous by the continual twists and turns of this boy’s experiences as he grows up. While the story itself is undeniably remarkable, readers maybe astounded to discover that Skyhorse’s book is a nonfiction account of his own childhood.
It took courage to share “Take This Man” with the world, but when Skyhorse couldn’t find respite in books, his prime vehicles of escape and refuge, because there were no books with people sharing his experiences, he was determined to rectify that reality.
“I realized as I got older that I had, shall we say, an unconventional upbringing, and I felt really alienated as a result. Based on my training, I went looking for answers, for people who had similar experiences to mine in books. They were really hard to find, so I figured I guess I am just going to have to write the book. I wanted to create a document that said, ‘No, you are not the only person. I have had these experiences, too, and this is what I think I have learned from them,’” Skyhorse said.
A professor at Indiana University, author of “The Madonnas of Echo Park” and editor and contributor to the anthology “We Wear the Mask,” Skyhorse is happy to share his writing methods. He laughs as he recalls telling his classes that he started the process of writing “Take This Man” in 1996, but didn’t publish it until 2014. They were shocked both by the length of time and the fact that he began working on the book before they were born.
“I turned in a draft in 2011, and I essentially had to rewrite that draft from almost word one. I’m a really fast writer, but I’m a very slow reviser. For any people who are reading this and think, ‘Hey, I would really like to write a book,’ sure the writing is the easy part. You can write a book. Revising it so that you have a really good book that is a lot harder,” he said.
Skyhorse describes his mother as a woman with an incredible presence who mesmerized people with extraordinary stories. A fantastic listener, he says she had the ability to make people feel as though they were the most important individuals in the room.
“I think that every son believes that his mother is a beautiful woman and commands the attention of every person in the room, but my mother was really like that. She was one of those striking personalities that whenever she walked into a room people were like, ‘Who is that person?’ That energy—people were just drawn to her. I think that people who met her wanted her stories to be true because she wanted the stories to be true.”
When asked what he is most proud of regarding this book, Skyhorse says it is the times people walk up and tell him that his mother was a great person.
“As a person, I say, ‘Did you read the part where my mom tried to kill me twice?’ I am not exaggerating. She tried to kill me on two separate occasions. But they’ll tell me, ‘You know what? I understand her,’ and that means that I did my job correctly as a writer. My job isn’t to demonize anybody. My job is to say here is a person who was in a really complicated situation. Here’s how she handled it. My job is to tell stories.”
Skyhorse is Collin College’s 2017-2018 Book-in-Common author. He will be presenting and signing books in April at the college’s campuses in Frisco, Plano and McKinney. The events are free and open to the public.
Skyhorse says “Take This Man” boils down to one concept—what it is like to love people who are not easy to love.
“I am excited to come to Collin. I really want to reach college-aged students who might be experiencing their own sort of dramatic, traumatic situations at home and looking for somebody else to have perhaps experienced what they have experienced, not exactly of course because everyone’s experiences are unique. I hope that they say, ‘Now I feel less alone,’ and, ‘Hey, this guy made it out, and he doesn’t seem like he is Superman or anything. He didn’t do anything that was crazy or unreasonable. Maybe I can make it out, too.’ That’s the hope, that sense of you’re not alone.”
Meet Skyhorse at 7 p.m., Monday, April 9 at the Preston Ridge Campus Conference Center, 9700 Wade Blvd., in Frisco or at 1 p.m. Tuesday, April 10 at the Central Park Campus Conference Center, 2400 Community Ave, in McKinney or 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 10 at the Spring Creek Campus Living Legends Conference Center, 2800 E. Spring Creek Pkwy., in Plano.
For more information, visit www.collin.edu/academics/bookincommon/.
Reprinted with permission of Allen Image