Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia-this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. Brought up under strict social mores, the move to the States provides the girls a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ``Antojos'' (roughly translated ``cravings''), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ``The Kiss,'' one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ``Trespass,'' Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ``Still Lives,'' young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ``Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen.'' The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the tradeoff that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues-serious and light-that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievous sense.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-945575-57-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
PROFILES
APPRECIATIONS
Comic novel set in a small town in Texas from the author of Night of the Avenging Blowfish (1994) and Begin to Exit Here (1992). The title—inspired by the game show Wheel of Fortune—is the one English phrase that Alfredo Santayana, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, knows. He's hiding in an abandoned house just outside of Waxahachie, Texas, and, as the story begins, the innocent Alfredo is about to become a suspect in an investigation of satanic practices. Little Eva Galt, a minister's kid, spies on him and then befriends him. Meanwhile, another preacher's kid, Kenlow, begins drawing pentagrams around the countryside and leaving whatever fresh meat he can find—beef liver, Vienna sausage—as evidence of ritual sacrifice. The sheriff would just as soon laugh the matter off, but then Eva finds a skeleton, suggesting what may be a real case of satanic sacrifice. The local media get hold of it. An evangelical preacher embraces the issue. Someone claims to have seen the Virgin Mary reflected on the surface of a post office stamp machine; the stamp machine is stolen. And, in still another skewed expression of religious fervor, a painter reproduces drawings from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of the local food mart. It truly seems as though some kind of wacky conspiracy is at work, but then Eva spots Kenlow at his mischief, clearing up much of the mystery. Alfredo even becomes a hero, and, green card in hand, gets a job scooping up smashed armadillos from the highway. Welter goes for laughs, and often gets them—his kids here, in particular, are charming, as they speculate upon the utility of prayer or troll for catfish at the local sewage lagoon. On the other hand, Welter uses such a broad brush that he's never truly satirical, and his quintessential small town is both too idealized and dumbed-down to be believable. A Tom Bodett wannabe.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 1996
ISBN: 1-56512-118-X
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A posthumous gathering of tales by the noted Cuban-American writer (The Old Gents, see below). Yglesias (191995) was an accomplished novelist who, judging from the pieces in this collection, his first and only, used the story form mainly to explore in miniature the themes that supported the more graceful architecture of his novels. Indeed, the last story here, ``An Idea for a Story,'' reads like a rough draft of his final novel, The Old Gents. Running throughout are the key motifs of his body of work, the debt owed to youth by age, the struggle to hold onto the political fervor of one's early years and, most of all, the tensions between Latino and non-Latino in the contemporary US, often as played out in a single person's identity. The best of these stories, ``The Place I Was Born'' and ``An Idea for a Story,'' have a wry, droll humor that serves to underline rather than undercut their basic seriousness. Other entries, particularly the title piece (a tale of a good, gray liberal whose son is involved in the 1968 Columbia University uprising), and ``In the Bronx'' (in which a middle-class Latina is forced to come to grips with her roots in the barrio) are weighed down with topical references that date awkwardly. For all the obvious sincerity of his political commitments, Yglesias is most inspired when writing about the micro-politics of family life and sex, as in ``Celia's Family'' and ``The Place I Was Born.'' It is useful to have his stories collected in one volume, but it's also clear that Yglesias was always a more effective writer when he worked on a larger canvas.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-55885-182-8
Page Count: 185
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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