Coming this Fall! Grito 2048, A Climate Fiction Novel

About Grito 2048
The climate fiction novel Grito 2048 opens as elder Marina flees the City across seas swollen by climate catastrophe to track her husband, who she believes has been desaparecido, disappeared, in Karaya by political persecution. World power teeters between the many and the few. In Karaya’s Naval Base, the few–the crumbling Diez Familias empire–ready their escapes to their replica planets and disappear and torture Todxs rebels, while alongside the Base, in the seaside Palenque encampment, the many forge ingenious truces with climate and political chaos. Emboldened by her 17-year-old son Machi, Marina joins Todxs winner-take-all fight to take back Earth. But will she find the courage to get her son and husband back?
The present time of this novel, the six months leading up to Grito Day in 2048, is told through protagonist Marina’s realtime blog posts on todos.world, Palenque’s fictional website. Woven through realtime are posts in other voices and from other times from Marina’s archive web page and the web pages of other Palenqueros. Together, these fictional web pages unfold the alternate history Advance Praise for Grito 2048:
“Maritza Arrastia has written a book that is so urgent and unique for our current moment and with concern for our future that she has produced a new kind of literature that feels like a beautiful mix of poetry, prose, science fiction, and journalism. Grito 2048 feels like a modern archetype, tapping deep into the spirit of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s sci-fi classic World on A Wire, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Ian M Bank’s Culture Series, all propelled by the undeniable inspiration of the genre-shredding and humanist sensibility found in Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler. Arrastia has staked her claim with a book that is alive and real, finding its way into the hearts and minds of all who will read these words.”
–Antonino D’Ambrosio, Filmmaker (Johnny
Cash’s Bitter Tears, Frank Serpico, Roberta)
“In Maritza Arrastia’s compelling new novel of climate justice and resistance, Grito 2048, the world is in the grip of an “apocapitalypse” of war-making and bloody repression, controlled by the City, the center of an Empire that threatens the survival of the planet and the human species. Marina, the protagonist of Grito, leaves the city to search for her husband, who has been “desaparecido” (disappeared) by the powerful regime along with 1,000’s of other resisters. As the global day of resistance, the Grito, which has been celebrated annually for centuries, approaches, Marina builds a new life in Palenque, a hodge podge community of creative survival under the leadership of Todxs—a movement led by brown and black youth from the barrios of the world. Grito 2048, set in a plausibly and vividly drawn near future, finds hope and a way forward in Todxs--all of us. Fans of Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson will love this new addition to the cli-fi genre.”
–Elena Schwolsky, author of the award
winning memoir Waking in Havana: A
Memoir of AIDS and Healing in Cuba
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“Like the best of speculative fiction, Maritza Arrastia illuminates our present world and the future we are forging. Grito 2048 is, at times, beautiful terrifying, yet somehow remains deeply inspiring and hopeful throughout. This book is the book for these times. You want to take this journey. Your soul will thank you.”
–Makani Themba, organizer, author
Our Beautiful Next (forthcoming)
“Maritza Arrastia has written a visionary, creative, grounded-in-reality, radical and important contribution to the international movement of movements, which is the earth’s and all life forms’ hope for the future. Grito 2048’s starting point is our perilous situation today in the 20’s with the fossil fuel industry, capitalism, racism, sexism, and militarism seemingly unable to be defeated despite all past and present, people
powered, mass resistance movements. Via the feelings, thoughts, experiences, and historical understandings of a revolutionary elder, Marina, active and personally struggling, but persevering throughout those 25 years, she shows us how, yes, we can overcome capitalism and create a new world. Maritza/Marina in Grito 2048 has made an important contribution to a truly just and loving future world.”
–Ted Glick, Climate organizer, author,
21st Century Revolution
“This novel Grito 2048 by Maritza Arrastía addresses one of the crucial issues of our time: climate change. Her work has interesting characters and an intense plot that captivate the reader’s attention.” –Myrna Nieves, Poet and editor, author,
Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican
Women Writers in New York 1980-2012.
“‘A Grito is the cry to start a war and pass the torch of liberation across the centuries.’ In this poetic and prophetic novel, Maritza Arrastia encourages us to imagine the mythical worlds created, a mirror image of what must happen now to save ourselves and our planet. She has
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written a Grito, a call to arms, and a call to our humanity, to prevent the destruction of Earth and its people by Capitalism. Like the Gritos that have existed before and after us, all that is left is for us to believe and act as if liberation is not only possible but on its way. Thank you, Maritza, for your Grito - may we all heed the call.”
–Teresa Basilio, Media activist, director/producer
Everybody Wants a Revolution (forthcoming)
“Grito 2048 is a Freedom Dream. Maritza has created a work of fiction that feels so real because it’s so intimate and personal. This work of Afro-Boricua Futurism teaches us that revolution is not a process achieved by great men in opposition, but by the people who struggle, who strive, and who exist as possibilities of being human and in community that make revolution irresistible and inevitable. Grito 2048 tells us the most important truth for the times we live in. Revolution is not made by the machinery of military might, but through the kind of cultural interventions that shift the peoples’ hearts until they are so filled with love for one another, that revolution is the only possibility left. Grito 2048, if enough people read it, can be one of those cultural interventions not just to create more dreaming of freedom, but indeed to create more Freedom Dreamers like Maritza herself.
–Brandon Forrester, Organizer, documentary executive producer and photographer, Deeper Than a Divide
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About the Author
Maritza Arrastía’s five-decade activist-worker-writer life spans reporting and editing at CLARIDAD bilingue; publishing and performing poetry and drama; writing fiction—including the novel Exile, journalism, and essays; and teaching literacy and English for Speakers of Other Languages by collaborating with learners to create the learning community’s literature. She’s committed to activist, liberatory writing and to building collective publishing vehicles. Find her writing at maritzaarrastia.net
and speculative future of an imaginary Caribbean island—half a colony, Karaya, and half a socialist republic, Ventura.