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WORK TITLE: The Sovereign
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://idonotmove.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.brown.edu/academics/literary-arts/andrew-colarusso * https://www.brown.edu/academics/literary-arts/events/andrew-colarusso * http://wolflit.com/authors/andrew-e-colarusso/ * http://artsfuse.org/161200/book-review-the-sovereign-anarchy-in-puerto-rico/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Brooklyn, NY.
EDUCATION:New York University, B.A., 2011; Brown University, M.F.A., 2013.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Brown University, Providence, RI, visiting assistant professor. Founder and editor-in-chief of the Broome Street Review.
AWARDS:John Hawkes Prize in Fiction, Brown University.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including Callaloo Art, Callaloo, 3:AM, and Fence.
SIDELIGHTS
Andrew Elias Colarusso is a writer and educator. He holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University and a master’s degree from Brown University. At Brown, Colarusso received the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. In 2009, he founded the Broome Street Review literary magazine. He also serves as the publication’s editor in chief. Colarusso has contributed to other publications, including Callaloo Art, Callaloo, 3:AM, and Fence.
Born in Brooklyn, New York to an Afro-Puerto Rican mother and an Italian American father, Colarusso has been vocal on his Puerto Rican heritage and issues related to Puerto Rico. In a lengthy interview with Kiese Laymon, contributor to the Gawker website, Colarusso stated: “National and international policy is important to me as a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is arguably (one of) the last colonial entities in the modern world. Despite being taxed without representation—the same thing American colonists rebelled against—a sense of cultural pride and integrity has not been extinguished. Is it fundamentally a culture which has come to phagocytically incorporate and exorcise the influence of its successive occupations? I think this is a fascinating measure of Puerto Rican resistance and resilience.” Colarusso added: “We have to recognize the effects of this liminal/invisible state on those of us who live in the diaspora. Our relative freedom as citizens of the U.S. has allowed us to travel to the states (and back) since the turn of the American century. In the states we frequently occupy the lowest rungs of economic well-being and labor tirelessly in pursuit of the American dream. But we are statistically worse off on the island. I would like to see decisive political action regarding Puerto Rico.”
In 2017, Colarusso released his first novel, The Sovereign. The action in the book takes place mostly in Puerto Rico. One of the characters is an American soldier, who flies military drones over the island. He is half-Puerto Rican, but he finds himself disconnected from his work. Flying the drones brings back childhood memories of his friend Miguel teaching him how to use a Game Boy device. Another character is Frances Villegas, a keyboardist and member of the rebel group, the Evangelist Insurrection. She and her fellow rebels want to gain freedom from the United States. Malou is another character, who is a key member of the rebellion. She also possesses many books that were passed down to her from her parents, who were of Dutch and Spanish heritage. The books include important volumes by Puerto Rican thinkers.
Critics offered mixed reviews of The Sovereign. A Kirkus Reviews contributor suggested: “Some of the manuscript seems an exercise in grad school style.” However, the contributor added: “Vonnegut would be at home in some passages.” The same contributor concluded: “Readers with a taste for literary experimentalism and the Caribbean diaspora may take interest in Colarusso’s effort.” Lucas Spiro, critic on the Arts Fuse website, remarked: “Unfortunately, Colarusso’s yen to be avant-garde exudes, at times, a smarter-than-thou quality (grad school edition), a self-consciousness that ends up dissipating his story’s visceral power. The Sovereign is impressive, but it falters because it is so damned determined to be impressive.” Spiro added: “To his credit, Colarusso manages to imbue the book’s pauses with urgency; sometimes a confrontation is conveyed through one continuous paragraph, or an episode’s claustrophobia is mimicked through syntactical disruption. The narrative’s shards are loosely tied together, mainly through a thematic clash between the idea of revolution and nation, both concepts partaking of an elemental lawlessness.” Spiro also stated: “The purpose for the clotted prose is easy to understand: a juxtaposition of the vulgar, the violent, and the erotic with the objective, the scientific, and the ordinary. But the result is repetitive and grotesque.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2017, review of The Sovereign.
ONLINE
Andrew E. Colarusso Website, http://idonotmove.com (April 9, 2018).
Arts Fuse, http://artsfuse.org/ (July 11, 2017 ), Lucas Spiro, review of The Sovereign.
Brown University, Literary Arts Website, https://www.brown.edu/ (April 9, 2018), author faculty profile.
Gawker, http://gawker.com/ (March 14, 2015), Kiese Laymon, author interview.
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated with a BA in Comparative Literature from New York University and received an MFA from Brown University. He is founder and editor-in-chief of The Broome Street Review.
QUOTED: "National and international policy is important to me as a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is arguably (one of) the last colonial entities in the modern world. Despite being taxed without representation—the same thing American colonists rebelled against—a sense of cultural pride and integrity has not been extinguished. Is it fundamentally a culture which has come to phagocytically incorporate and exorcise the influence of its successive occupations? I think this is a fascinating measure of Puerto Rican resistance and resilience."
"We have to recognize the effects of this liminal/invisible state on those of us who live in the diaspora. Our relative freedom as citizens of the U.S. has allowed us to travel to the states (and back) since the turn of the American century. In the states we frequently occupy the lowest rungs of economic well-being and labor tirelessly in pursuit of the American dream. But we are statistically worse off on the island. I would like to see decisive political action regarding Puerto Rico."
Times Six: On Black Life and the Horizon of Possibility
7.42K
Kiese Laymon and Andrew Elias Colarusso
03/14/15 12:00PM
Filed to: TIMES SIX SERIES
Few young creative writers in our world write so curiously and honestly out of our varied black American literary tradition as Andrew Elias Colarusso. The biracial son of an Afro-Puerto Rican mother and an Italian American father; Andrew writes, "Because I did and do have a loving relationship with my (white) biological father I cannot dismiss the whiteness he has come to represent without dismissing a part of who I am."
Andrew, who is equally adept at poetry, speculative fiction, and literary nonfiction founded The Broome Street Review, an independently published literary journal founded in 2009. When I heard he was interested in being a part of the Times Six series, I knew Andrew would give us wonderfully odd-shaped shards of memory, incisive critique, and an ability to imagine a future for our country that most of us had yet to consider.
Two of the questions in this series focus on memory, love, misogyny, and blackness. Two of the questions place us at 12 years old, the same age Tamir Rice was when he was gunned down by police in Cleveland Ohio; and the same age Davia Garth was, who was killed by her stepfather in the same city. One of the questions asks us imagine two incredibly needed national policy proposals. The final question ponders how black lives can actually matter in 2015.
Laymon: Tell me about the first time you remember your love for black folks being threatened?
Colarusso: This is an especially difficult question for me as a biracial man. The answer invariably implicates (and estranges) my family and my self as one with filial ties to both blackness and its inverse. As a child coming of age, as a superhero in training, I needed to understand my origin. I needed to know why my black mother and white father (if you'll pardon my reductionism of both identities) never married. Certain truths were made clear to me, truths that even today I am glad to parse through. It was strange to know that cultural customs allowed in my mother's house were shunned in my father's house. Wearing a du-rag, for example. This was something that my father was ashamed to see on my head one morning after picking me up in Flatbush, Brooklyn and driving me over to his house in New Springville, Staten Island. It should be mentioned that nearly every person in my nuclear family (except my step-mother) has worked for the New York City Department of Corrections. What my father saw on my head that morning was, for him, a criminal garment—racialized contraband.
Let me further delve into the complexities of a liminal subjectivity. Because I am, and have been, allowed so intimately into both white and black spaces I have felt the estranging sting of race so many times I've lost count. In fact, I have difficulty pin-pointing one situation—as Dr. Prescod-Weinstein said, "I can't remember a time when my love for black folks wasn't being threatened." It is a profound reality of black life that we are constantly threatened. But because I did and do have a loving relationship with my (white) biological father, because I have come to understand him as a man who loved, but loved incompletely, my mother, because I recognize myself in him and am proud to say so—I cannot dismiss the whiteness he has come to represent without dismissing a part of who I am.
And perhaps we all know this feeling in some way—that a love for black people, our people, is always radical in the face of a patriarchal authority that, whether conscious of it or not, seeks to suppress the imaginative impossibilities made possible by acts of black love and life.
I should say finally that some of the best memories I have of Dad are in the car, driving from Brooklyn to Staten Island singing along to Sam Cooke's Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964. Something I might never have lived without.
When you were twelve years old, can you describe for me what a perfect day would look like?
At twelve I was a consummate dreamer with a rich (see: perverse) fantasy life. I suppose this hasn't changed. The year was 2001. Everything changed after I turned twelve. Especially as a New Yorker. It was also the year following the release of Pokemon Gold and Silver. The perfect day for me would have been succeeding in class, coming home to my grandmother's carne empanada (which I shamelessly drenched in hot sauce and ketchup), playing ball with my cousin, resting my head before sleep to fantasize about everything.
If twelve-year-old you could describe the most exciting thing you did last night, what would he say?
The most exciting thing I did last night either involved the Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue or evolving my Eevee into an Umbreon. #SoftcoreNerd. Frederick's of Hollywood is still racy. Lord.
Can you describe your first memory of misogyny and anti-blackness colliding?
Because I am literal minded, the first instance that comes to mind is in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. The vitriol in a term like "nigger bitch."
"White man's bones," Macon said. He stood up and yawned. The dark of the sky was softened now. "Nigger bitch roaming around with a white man's bones." He yawned again. "I'll never understand that woman. I'm seventy-two years old and I'm going to die not understanding one thing about her."
This was said by Macon Jr. regarding Pilate. That has stayed with me for a long time as I've come to see the myriad ways we subjugate and suppress the subjectivities of black womanhood.
If you could concretely propose any two new national policies, what would they be?
One: National and international policy is important to me as a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is arguably (one of) the last colonial entities in the modern world. Despite being taxed without representation—the same thing American colonists rebelled against—a sense of cultural pride and integrity has not been extinguished. Is it fundamentally a culture which has come to phagocytically incorporate and exorcise the influence of its successive occupations? I think this is a fascinating measure of Puerto Rican resistance and resilience.
Puerto Rico has voted for Statehood in the most recent (2012) referendum, but the U.S. has failed to acknowledge this. The decision rests entirely on U.S. mainland government. We have to recognize the effects of this liminal/invisible state on those of us who live in the diaspora. Our relative freedom as citizens of the U.S. has allowed us to travel to the states (and back) since the turn of the American century. In the states we frequently occupy the lowest rungs of economic well-being and labor tirelessly in pursuit of the American dream. But we are statistically worse off on the island. I would like to see decisive political action regarding Puerto Rico. I would like to see America honor my island nation's desire to reap the full benefits of their labor and citizenship. But, more than that, I would like to see grassroots political movement spring from my people. I believe that Puerto Rico can exercise decisive political action that would allow for its sovereignty and, moreover, its success as an independent nation.
Two: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." —Muriel Rukeyser. I believe that a history of suffrage is also a history of visibility. This nation operates on both a democratic ideal and a republican ideal. If individuals were polled on which ideal they most identified with, we'd all be a little surprised. I say this only because what has stopped us from implementing pro-choice policy is the pseudo-religious morality of a democratic ideal, and the exclusivity of a white/male republican elect. Justice for women means allowing women the right to choose what is done to their bodies—but the idea appeals to and feeds a masculine (emasculated) fear. I am a born-again Christian, but I believe in justice. I believe that a mother is the primary executor of the life of her unborn child, not the state. I would implement pro-choice policy—with the caveat that we radically reimagine sexual education and our framing of sexual paradigms.
How can black lives really matter in these United States of America?
Black life, as Fred Moten would elegantly suggest over black lives, is invaluable. Black life constitutes the horizon of possibility in this country. The fact that we have to say "Black lives matter" is evidence of a (national) structural flaw and a valuation that enters black life into a precarious (fluctuating) economy. My reaction to this expression is one of awakening, then re-awakening, to the reality that this country has failed its own imagination and has succumbed, again, to the perverseness of its fantasies. Still, I believe in progress. To believe otherwise is to spit in the face of my ancestors, who've sacrificed their lives for my present. This is exactly why the expression "Black lives matter" as a sign of democratic agency is invaluable. The expression itself is evidence of political awakening. Our agency in this country is always threatened, over and above the individual—who can be handsomely and forgetfully incorporated into the system. Value can be placed on an individual within a system, but how does the system account for individuals whose collective awareness and agency threatens the fundamental machinations of its governance. I support the efforts of thinkers and leaders like Jesse A. Meyerson and Mychal Denzel Smith who are engaged with constructive political change. We need leadership, significant vision, and sacrificial courage to galvanize the forward movement of our various agencies because, at the end of the day, we have taken for granted the reality of black life in these United States of America.
Andrew Elias Colarusso received a B.A. in comparative literature from NYU and an MFA from Brown University in literary arts. This year, he completed a novel, The Sovereign, and a collection of poems titled, Gentile; or, Bellwether for the Goliard.
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He received his B.A. in Comparative Literature from New York University (2011) and his M.F.A. from Brown University (2013) where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Broome Street Review, an independently published literary journal dedicated to art and culture at the vanguard. His debut novel, The Sovereign, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press (2017) and his writing has been published or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Callaloo Art,Fence, and 3:AM Magazine.
Andrew Colarusso
Visiting Asst. Professor in Literary Arts
Office Location: Room 228 - 70 Brown St.
Phone: (401) 863-5206
Andrew_Colarusso@brown.edu
Fall 2017 Courses
TBD
Spring 2018 courses
TBD
Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He received his B.A. in Comparative Literature from New York University (2011) and his M.F.A. from Brown University (2013). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Broome Street Review, an independently published literary journal dedicated to art and culture at the vanguard. His debut novel, The Sovereign, is available from Dalkey Archive Press and his writing has been published or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Callaloo Art, FENCE, and 3:AM Magazine, among others. Ever exploring the possibility of life limned from the unspeakable, Andrew “…builds the hum right into his lines, each one yearning for the next, stretching across space—both terrestrial space and stellar space. Listen for the constellations, the rearrangements, the brief time one image has to impart something vital to the other.”
Andrew maintains a personal site here: www.iDoNotMove.com
Photo by Kate Yoland.
No bio
QUOTED: "Some of the manuscript seems an exercise in grad school style."
"Vonnegut would be at home in some passages."
"Readers with a taste for literary experimentalism and the Caribbean diaspora may take interest in Colarusso's effort."
Colarusso, Andrew Elias: THE SOVEREIGN
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Colarusso, Andrew Elias THE SOVEREIGN Dalkey Archive (Adult Fiction) $17.00 5, 26 ISBN: 978-1-94315-0-106
Magical realism makes its way to Puerto Rico tinged with surrealism, post-realism, postmodernism, and even a little technospeak.What happens when an ant ports a fungus into the colony, or when people merely trying to get to city from suburb have to put up with the anti-social barfing of an underage drunk on a train? "We are still sitting impatiently in the dark," a harried rider remarks in a moment that might serve as the thesis for Colarusso's overstuffed debut novel, mostly set in a Puerto Rico that does not entirely correspond to the real one. There, though an American territory whose residents are citizens, sort of, military drones ply the air like obscene birds of night, piloted from afar by career soldiers disconnected from the damage they do. One of whom, half borriqueno himself, is as much an artist of the joystick--"To watch Miguel play was something like watching a nervous portrait or a score to the music of his friend's mind," he recalls of a Game Boy mentor--as his rebel foe, a lieutenant named Frances Villegas, is an artist of the keyboard. "This is my song, Coronel. It brings me joy even if I don't play well by your standards," she tells her comandante, aware that a drone may interrupt the recital at any minute. For their part, the members of the Evangelist Insurrection, determined to shake off U.S. rule, are willing to do just about anything to gain the island's freedom, scorched earth and all. But what might happen if they succeed? It's one of many conditionals in a narrative that takes in brujeria, Santeria, negritude, and GlaxoSmithKline. Some of the manuscript seems an exercise in grad school style, some a dark here and playful there recasting of Caribbean history; Vonnegut would be at home in some passages, Junot Diaz in others, and if the story itself seems to fly off in different directions at times, the memorable characters, particularly the much-put-upon Malou, help keep things on track. Readers with a taste for literary experimentalism and the Caribbean diaspora may take interest in Colarusso's effort.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Colarusso, Andrew Elias: THE SOVEREIGN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668737/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f59ffb0a. Accessed 16 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668737
QUOTED: "Unfortunately, Colarusso’s yen to be avant-garde exudes, at times, a smarter-than-thou quality (grad school edition), a self-consciousness that ends up dissipating his story’s visceral power. The Sovereign is impressive, but it falters because it is so damned determined to be impressive."
"To his credit, Colarusso manages to imbue the book’s pauses with urgency; sometimes a confrontation is conveyed through one continuous paragraph, or an episode’s claustrophobia is mimicked through syntactical disruption. The narrative’s shards are loosely tied together, mainly through a thematic clash between the idea of revolution and nation, both concepts partaking of an elemental lawlessness."
"The purpose for the clotted prose is easy to understand: a juxtaposition of the vulgar, the violent, and the erotic with the objective, the scientific, and the ordinary. But the result is repetitive and grotesque."
Book Review: “The Sovereign” — Anarchy in Puerto Rico
JULY 11, 2017 1 COMMENT
Given the country’s current existential crisis, this genre-bending, ambitious-to-the-max debut novel about an uprising in Puerto Rico comes at the perfect time.
The Sovereign by Andrew E. Colarusso. Dalkey Archive Press, 297 pages, $17.
The-Sovereign-COVER
By Lucas Spiro
Look beyond Trump’s tweets and you will notice other messy disasters. For one, Puerto Rico is headed toward catastrophe. In June 2016, the US Congress approved the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), an attempt to control the finances, in the name of implementing austerity, in one of America’s remaining colonial territories. A devastating housing crisis, absurd energy costs, attacks on pension funds, decaying public education, and around $73 billion in public debt threaten the civilized survival of the island. Recently, Puerto Rico held a non-binding referendum. Despite statehood winning with 97% of the vote, a boycott by opposition parties limited turnout to only 23% of eligible voters.
Ironically, the referendum was held on the same day as the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York. The celebration became controversial when it chose to honor political prisoner and FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera, who after 35 years in federal prison had his sentence commuted by Barack Obama. In a parody of the chaos swirling around the island’s struggles, the parade’s corporate underwriters pulled out because of the public homage to Rivera.
Given the increased political turmoil, Andrew Elias Colarusso’s The Sovereign comes at the perfect time: it is a genre-bending, ambitious-to-the-max debut novel that revolves around a fictional uprising in Puerto Rico. At its best, this complex, experimental narrative succeeds at blending speculative fiction, magic realism, and techno-realism. Colarusso also succeeds in offering insightful commentary on the nuances of Puerto Rican culture in dense, often provocative prose:
Puerto Rican Logic. It was a gift economy within a communal system wrapped in bourgeois ideology. Xenia to a fault. Perhaps a manifestation of the deep and unacknowledged belief that God(s) or angels walked among them disguised as the wretched of the barrios.
Unfortunately, Colarusso’s yen to be avant-garde exudes, at times, a smarter-than-thou quality (grad school edition), a self-consciousness that ends up dissipating his story’s visceral power. The Sovereign is impressive, but it falters because it is so damned determined to be impressive.
Much of the novel is told through scenes of suspension: a New York City subway train is stalled in a dark tunnel, two sisters hide out in a restaurant after an explosion, rebel leaders in a decaying safe house wait for a drone strike to blow them to smithereens. To his credit, Colarusso manages to imbue the book’s pauses with urgency; sometimes a confrontation is conveyed through one continuous paragraph, or an episode’s claustrophobia is mimicked through syntactical disruption. The narrative’s shards are loosely tied together, mainly through a thematic clash between the idea of revolution and nation, both concepts partaking of an elemental lawlessness.
Colarusso rejects traditional character development; he never fully clarifies the relationships among his story’s figures and what they believe. Much of The Sovereign, like the nature and objectives of the revolution, remains enigmatic. The rebels call themselves the Evangelists, but to what extent religion plays a role in their ideology is obscure. In fact, exactly just what the revolution stands for is a mystery, even to its highest-ranking members. The Colonel, in a safe house with Lieutenant Frances Villegas, asks her who they are. After she replies with their movement’s name, the Colonel says “No. No. No. That’s what they call us. Who are we?” He goes onto explain that “We are the music makers, Lieutenant… We are the dreamers of the dreams.” Who they are seems to matter less than the fact that they exist, that they attempt to live “apart from the stale rhetoric of the so-called American creed. Apart from its veiled brutality and militarism… the pyrrhic romanticism of the empire.” The Colonel gives no other rationale than “Because it’s time,” and that God is on their side. This is revolution as motivated by both a radical rejection of the way things are, and a sense of destiny.
Much of The Sovereign plays with the discourses of postcolonialism, Afro-Caribbean history, colonialism (European and American), and Puerto Rican literature. Malou, who, as the mother of the revolution, could be seen as the story’s protagonist, prizes a library gifted to her by her Dutch-Spanish parents. The shelves are filled with precious “texts that would instill in her a sense of individuality and historical progress.” Among the volumes are those penned by advocates for Puerto Rican liberation, such as Eugenio Mario de Hostos and Bibiana Benitez. If nothing else, The Sovereign encourages readers to see the current conflicts over Puerto Rico’s identity as part of an evolving historical process. In an effort to evoke Puerto Rico’s cultural distinctiveness and its diaspora, Colarusso also brings up music and dance, providing analyses and commentary on Hector Lavoe, samba, and bachata. He also includes pop references to video game culture to draw parallels with U.S. militarism.
Many readers might find this encyclopedic quality to be a drawback, and Colarusso is sensitive to the charge. He even offers an apology in a note, confessing “those unbearably tedious parts of The Sovereign” could be seen as “a document of what wrongheaded loneliness a writer might mistakenly undertake.” The overstuffing is not a major drawback; what is downright bad is Colarusso’s bizarre descriptions of sexuality. For example: “Frances… could taste the scent of Sam’s pussy, radiating heat, bilirubinic excess.” Elsewhere, a woman fishes a man’s “coagulated pearl of hydrophobic semen” from a bath. The purpose for the clotted prose is easy to understand: a juxtaposition of the vulgar, the violent, and the erotic with the objective, the scientific, and the ordinary. But the result is repetitive and grotesque.
Does Colarusso see a future in national liberation? Who knows? The Evangelist’s revolution seems to end in a bitter betrayal, a defeat capped by a horrific battle between a man and a flame-throwing Predator drone. Apparently, the “pyrrhic romanticism” of America wins the day. Still, a strong sense of “a curse on both your houses” runs through The Sovereign. The book’s opening image is of an ant suffering from a cordyceps infection, a disease that can devastate an entire colony. For Colarusso, this is a universal predicament, because “madness in the animal kingdom is communicable.” Apply this notion to humanity, and ideologies become guises for insanity, competing irrational forces that refuse to understand one another. That attitude would seem to be a recipe for passivity — sit back and choose your brand of madness. Alas, given America’s unjust treatment of Puerto Rico, Colarusso’s spectacularly anarchistic vision might become depressingly predictive.
Lucas Spiro is a writer living outside Boston. He studied Irish literature at Trinity College Dublin and his fiction has appeared in the Watermark. Generally, he despairs. Occassionally, he is joyous.