Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
El Paso, 1987. Two boys. The secrets take all summer.
For you if
you are still figuring out what you feel and need a book that takes that slowness seriously instead of rushing you toward an answer
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El Paso, 1987. Ari is fifteen, angry in ways he can't name, with a father who fought in Vietnam and doesn't talk about it and a brother in prison no one talks about either. Dante is also fifteen, the son of two professors, talkative where Ari is closed off, certain about things Ari has never let himself consider. They become friends at the public pool. Then they become something Ari doesn't have words for and isn't sure he wants words for. Sáenz writes Mexican American identity, masculinity, family, and desire with a poet's patience — there is no external villain forcing anyone toward a confrontation, no single dramatic coming-out scene. The obstacle is entirely internal: Ari's slow, halting, often self-sabotaging journey toward understanding what he feels and why he's spent so much energy not feeling it. The parents in this book love their sons completely and are still slow to find the language for who their sons are — and Sáenz holds both truths without making either one cancel the other. Multiple Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Award winner. Frequently challenged and banned. The most literary and most patient entry in the Be Yourself bundle — where some books in this collection are about claiming an identity quickly and joyfully, this one is about the slow internal work of getting there.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Mexico • Latin America
- Voice
- Written by a Mexican author
- Topics
- vietnam war
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe(2023)
dir. Aitch Alberto
One summer, secrets neither boy knew he had.
In 1987 El Paso, two Mexican-American teenage loners strike up a friendship that cracks open everything one of them has spent years keeping carefully closed off — including who he is. Adapted from Benjamin Alire Sáenz's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in its tenderness rather than its edge — a bilingual, bicultural, queer coming-of-age story that doesn't need trauma to justify its own gentleness. Pedagogical in showing how friendship can crack open a kid who's spent years protecting himself by staying closed.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(2002)
dir. Dai Sijie
Banned books, secret readings, and one crush.
Two city students sent to a remote mountain village for Maoist "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution discover a hidden suitcase of banned Western novels — and use them to woo the local tailor's granddaughter. Adapted from Dai Sijie's own novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in treating banned Western novels as genuinely dangerous contraband — literature here isn't decoration, it's the thing state re-education is specifically designed to purge. Pedagogical in showing how forbidden art still gets in, and still changes people, even under total surveillance.
Same event, different angle
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✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Paradise of the Blind
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Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
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How fascism finds the boy next door.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Forever...
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The teen novel they banned for telling the truth.
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Rebellion drawn in black ink.
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Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
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The drug war by someone who stayed long enough.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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Girls raised to disappear before the cartel finds them.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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Mothers refusing to let their daughters be statistics.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
The Toothpaste Millionaire
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Toothpaste costs too much. He makes his own. Then sells it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Lawn Boy
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He started a lawn business. The economy had other plans.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Phantom Tollbooth
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A bored boy drives through a tollbooth. The other side is worth it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the First)
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Every adult fails them. Count Olaf nearly wins. Thirteen times.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST