About Featured Book: Mijo: We Bend, Not Break by Francisco Castillo
Mijo: We Bend, Not Break is a multigenerational family saga that explores the silence, strength, and emotional inheritance passed down through three generations of Mexican American men: Joaquín, Alejandro, and Gabriel Martínez. Set between the hills of Michoacán, Mexico, and the agricultural heartland of Hollister, California, the novel reveals how unspoken lessons of manhood ripple across decades, shaping love, loss, and the fragile hope of change.
The story begins in the late 1970s with Joaquín, a young husband and field laborer who leaves his hometown of Caulcomán, Michoacán, determined to build a better life in America. Hardened by poverty and his father’s emotional distance, Joaquín believes that silence and sacrifice define strength. Alongside his devoted wife, Carmen, he crosses the border and settles in Central California, where the promise of opportunity meets the reality of exhaustion and invisibility.
His quiet determination provides stability but also creates emotional distance that seeps into his home.
Years later, his son Alejandro comes of age in the 1990s, growing up between cultures and expectations. To Joaquín, emotion is weakness; to Alejandro, emotion is survival. Yet despite his yearning to connect, Alejandro internalizes his father’s restraint and carries the same unspoken lessons into adulthood. He falls in love with Elena, a woman who recognizes his tenderness but also senses the walls he cannot lower. When their son Gabriel is born, Alejandro vows to parent differently, but fatherhood exposes the very wounds he has spent his life avoiding.
Through recessions, job insecurity, and shifting generational values, the Martínez men confront what it truly means to be strong. Joaquín’s aging brings regret and quiet recognition of the love he failed to express. Alejandro, now a father himself, struggles to find emotional footing in a world that demands both resilience and vulnerability. Gabriel, growing up in the age of social media and mental health awareness, becomes the bridge between his family’s past and its possible future. His generation speaks the language of healing that his father and grandfather never learned.
When a family crisis forces old resentments and buried pain to surface, the three men begin therapy for the first time. Guided by a marriage and family therapist, they face the unspoken truths that have haunted them for decades. Through tears, resistance, and moments of clarity, each man begins to see that strength is not found in silence but in the courage to feel.
Mijo: We Bend, Not Break is a deeply human novel about fathers and sons, culture and migration, love and repair. It is about how healing rarely begins with words but with the decision to finally be seen.
