|
 The
Last of the Menu Girls
Author:
Denise Chavez
Price: $11.95
Shipping: $1.75
This
menu is replaced with delights for any reader's palate: well wrought
narrative, down-to-earth-flesh-and-blood characters and real insight into
the human condition. The Last of the Menu Girls is comprised of
seven interrelated stories that, through shifting narrative voices, define
the protagonist, Rocio Esquibel, as she herself takes stock of her family
and society. An acute awareness of accent, tone and dialect, not
only enrich the descriptive power of each story, but also enliven
characters that are rarely depicted in fiction: people who usually
do not draw our attention, always occupying a secondary plane as janitors,
gardeners, second-cousins, nurse's aides, etc.
The
Last of the Menu Girls is destined to become a milestone in the
current flourishing of women's narrative. It is more than
well-crafted fiction; it is a book which finally embraces with love those
countless women who, despite blending into the landscape, nevertheless are
holders of great truths, sufferers of existential pain and joyful
celebrants in the human parade. |
|
 Loteria & Other
Stories
Author:
Ruben Mendoza
Price: $14.95
(cloth)
Shipping: $1.75
I open
my eyes again to look at the moon's welcome light, but soon my eyes grow
heavy and I fall into dreams.
La
Muerta is holding up a card behind me with a picture on it, and my hand
reaches out in slow motion with a bean that grows heavier and heavier, so
heavy I can no longer carry it with just one hand. My card stretches
out of sight at my feet, and the bean is now a huge mottled brown
and white melon I carry against my stomach from picture to picture looking
for La Muerte, and searching for my mother, and wondering when he will
come and kiss me goodnight...and then suddenly....then suddenly...I am
standing on El Diabilito, and he rises up next to me out of his card with
his red spear and red pointy tail and his evil smile and goatee and
horns...I feel his hand moving all over my face and neck, and then all
over my body, and it is soft and cool. It feels good. |
