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New book 'The Broposal' is love story with a twist: a marriage between two men for a green card

Sonora Reyes and their book, "The Broposal."
Forever, Lee Call
Sonora Reyes and their book, "The Broposal."

The premise of Sonora Reyes’ new novel will be familiar to romcom fans: two best friends realize they’re in love. But Reyes puts a few interesting twists on that familiar story: for starters, the two best friends — Kenny and Han — are both men.

The whole thing starts because Han is undocumented. Kenny comes up with the idea that they should get fake married, so Han can get a green card. After that, they assure each other, they can totally drop the ruse.

Except it turns out not to be a ruse. The guys have been pals since they were 6 years old, and before long, it turns out their intimacy goes deeper than either of them realized.

The book is called “The Broposal,” and Reyes presents the story in the form of alternating diary entries from Kenny and Han, with each of them telling the story from their own perspective.

The Show spoke with recently, and they said that this character-centered approach is their favorite way to write.

Full conversation

SONORA REYES: One of the things that I have a lot of fun with with all of my books is the character voices. I really try to like get in their head when I write and just like be that person in at least the parts that I'm writing from their perspective. So I'm autistic, and I didn't actually decide to make Han like canonically autistic until one of the way later drafts, and that really unlocked his character voice for me.

SAM DINGMAN: Could you give me an example of maybe something about him or his voice that changed once you made that choice?

REYES: Yeah, so for example, thinking that he's straight before he realizes that he's fallen for Kenny because, I do think autism and like sexuality, a lot of the time can go hand in hand because you have this black and white thinking.

So, you know, when other people are seeing his chemistry with Kenny, and they're like, kind of the people make jokes like laughing because like, oh my God, they're so married or they're so boyfriends even before they were even supposed to get married.

And Han's like, oh, yeah, it's funny because I'm straight and that is the joke. They're making a joke because I am straight and it's right, so he's just like, that black and white thinking like made it really click for me, like why he doesn't get it.

DINGMAN: That's so interesting, yeah. Well, cause there's also I think a couple moments in the book where he says to us, the reader, well, I have only dated women previously, therefore I am straight. And then there's also a really interesting part where he's starting to realize that he might not be straight, where he says to us, I have only dated women, but I've never really wanted to have anything long term with them, and then he realizes like, oh maybe it's because I don't want them, oh I don't want them, I must be gay.

He's still trusting the linearity of his feelings. It's just that he's realizing that that line points in a different direction.

REYES: Yeah, he's a very like, it's like a very like, OK, A plus B, like it's very mathematical for him.

DINGMAN: Yeah. So there's also a pretty intense villain in the story in the form of Jackie, Kenny's longtime girlfriend, who is very emotionally abusive towards him, is physically abusive, she's also a bit of a stalker, she's a tough character. How did you find her and what was the work that went into bringing her into focus?

REYES: I think a lot of people who haven't met a Jackie before may think that it's a little unrealistic, but I really did think it was important to have her as a character in there because I think, you know, abuse towards men can be so understated, and I think there's a lot of just like brushing it aside.

When I write stories, my thing is like, I love a happy ending, but for me, the happy ending feels so much more earned if like me as my own, you know, damaged wounded self can really relate to the characters who earned that happy ending.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that's really compelling in the book to me is that for Kenny it seems it's much more about him learning that he has to live with the reality of who Jackie is. And that he can't fix any of the very real problems and traumas that she is dealing with. 

REYES: Yeah, I think the point of Kenny's arc is not to aid her in that journey. It's to know that he's not responsible for that journey.

DINGMAN: Yeah, you're making me realize as we're talking about this, that it feels like a lot of what you're writing about in this book is people realizing what others' capacities are.

REYES: Yeah, I think, you know, Kenny and Han obviously they've been in community with each other for their entire lives. They have their families, they have, you know, Letti and Tatiana and these other characters who, who are their community, and then there are people who they kind of have to, I don't know if leave behind is the right term, but they do have to kind of like let go of.

DINGMAN: Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought up their family members, at least in the case of Letty, because one of the book's pleasant surprises is that both characters' families are for the most part, pretty open minded and welcoming. Was there ever a version of this where the family dynamic was more a source of tension?

REYES: Not for this book, no. I have like other books where it's more found family and it's, it's more like, you know, there, there's a lot of familial strife, but for this book, I think especially because these two guys have been best friends since they're like six, their families are already so in love with both of them, right? So they do kind of come out, but it's not a surprise to anyone. Everyone's like, oh yeah, we knew.

DINGMAN: It's almost like they're coming out to themselves, which I really enjoyed. I mean, I, I think it's, it's kind of expected in romance stories and maybe even you know, fiction about young love and young queer love in particular.

It's like we're almost bracing for the the family strife, as you were, as you were putting it, but it struck me that you chose to write about something that is more nuanced, and I thought also more familiar, which is this sense of your family knowing you a little bit better than you do and being a little bit emotionally ahead of you and knowing that they just need to give you the space to get there.

REYES: Yeah, I think especially with like with Han's family because his cousin is Letty, who's trans, nonbinary, and like they have been out of the closet for way longer than Han, so like, his family has been primed for another coming out and he's not, you know, necessarily worried about their reception or anything like that, and like he lived with, you know, Letty growing up like they raised him. His problem isn't the family's acceptance, It's him figuring himself out.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. Another thing I have to say that struck me as a bit of an inversion of other stories of this kind is the fact that both of these characters, they're pretty sexually liberated.

Kenny and Jackie split up at one point and like the first thing Kenny does is download Grindr and like invite somebody to come over for a hookup, and we find out early on that almost all of Han's romantic experience up to the point of this book is casual hookups. It seems like it's, it's actually real intimacy and trust that neither of them has had before and maybe even didn't know they were looking for.

REYES: I wanted to do a couple things with it, like, first, I wanted it to be pretty sex positive, but also with the intimacy of really having someone that you fully trust is so different. What I was really trying to emphasize with them is just like the safety in knowing someone and communicating with them in an almost like unsexy way, if that makes sense, you know what I mean?

DINGMAN: Well, it's interesting because I found the intimate moments between them much less about sex and much more about them learning how to talk to each other in a way that they didn't realize they needed to learn because they think they know each other so well.

REYES: Exactly.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Sam Dingman is a reporter and host for KJZZ’s The Show. Prior to KJZZ, Dingman was the creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Family Ghosts.
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