What a great title for a book. What a shame that the book does not deal in either brevity or anything that resembles an account of Oscar’s life. This book was an absolute slog to get through. From the overt sexualization of women to the complete lack of plot there was nothing to be gained and certainly no connection to be made with any character. “The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don’t take […]
Islandborn
Lola and her classmates are mostly from “someplace else” but now call here home. A school project to draw what you remember best about that first place has Lola unsure of herself (after all, she was just a baby when she left and has no memories from then). Yet, she quickly figures out how to use the resources around her: her family, friends, neighbors and even the memory the island has of her, to capture her heritage. Adults will see current and historical events and […]
Immigrants! We get the job done?
Getting through Drown, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, took me close to a month. This delay was due to my very bad, no-good month of January, which included some emotional fall-out after the inauguration and the first two weeks of this administration. I can thus say that the stories in the book can be divided like so: Read pre-Trump vs. read post-Trump. Obviously this wasn’t Diaz’s intent – after all, it was published in 1996 – but personally, for me, the short stories […]
This is how you lose me…(yes, I realize it’s been said before).
I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao sometime earlier this CBR, and I was not…exactly…wildly enthusiastic over it. I felt that Díaz was a really talented storyteller, but his characters were unsympathetic and deeply, deeply maddening. But I decided that maybe Díaz’s writing would overcome the kinds of characters he developed in his novel. I am disappointed to report that his collection of short stories suffers from the same kinds of problems as his novel. This Is How You Lose Her is again […]