Mambo Peligroso: A Novel - Hardcover

Chao, Patricia

3.24

33 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060734175 ISBN 13: 9780060734176

Publisher: Harper, 2005

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When thirty-two-year-old Catalina Ortiz Midori walks into a shabby New York dance studio for her first mambo class, she has no idea that her life is about to change. Mesmerized by El Tuerto, the one-eyed teacher who smells of sandalwood and is a titan of the New York mambo scene, Catalina is also drawn to the dazzling technique of Wendy Cardoza, a Bronx mambera who is one of its reigning queens. Catalina is a Japanese-Cuban immigrant who has lost touch with her Cuban roots and finds it difficult to understand Spanish. Her apprenticeship with El Tuerto and Wendy, and her growing obsession with the world of mambo -- the music, the dancers, and the seductive dance itself -- will bring her back to her origins with a passion she didn't know she possessed.

Mambo Peligroso carries the reader from New York to Miami and eventually to Cuba, where the music began. Along the way, Catalina inadvertently becomes involved, through her cousin Guillermo, in a sinister Miami exile scheme.

Patricia Chao is the author of the highly praised novel Monkey King. In this new book, her second work of fiction, readers have a unique opportunity to enter an intriguing and exotic milieu and emerge with an insider's sense of the experience. With its vibrantly drawn characters -- and a narrative rhythm born of mambo itself, Mambo Peligroso is an irresistible read -- hot-blooded, fast-paced, and written with an intelligence and poetry that are the province of a magnificently gifted writer.

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About the Author:

Patricia Chao reviews Latin dance music for Global Rhythm magazine and is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Monkey King. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship as well as the New Voice Award for Poetry. She danced mambo with the performance troupe Casa de la Salsa, and lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

The pulsating world of Latin music and dance in New York City stars in Chao's well-written if uneven second novel (after 1997's The Monkey King), which explores the cross-cultural experience of Catalina Ortiz Midori—half Japanese, half Cuban, raised in New England—as she becomes a disciple of El Tuerto, a world-class dancer who teaches a class on the "dangerous mambo" of the title. As Midori keeps reminding us, mambo is not a hobby but a way of life—almost a calling. Clearly drawn from an intimate personal knowledge of the scene (Chao has a second career as a professional mambo dancer), the book delves deeply into the intricacies of the dance as it sketches the backgrounds of Midori, El Tuerto and Wendy Cardoza, a brilliant "mambera" who befriends Midori. It all seems like a sexy Latin version of Saturday Night Fever—a voyeuristic glimpse into an unfamiliar world—until Midori, visiting her cousin in Miami, gets peripherally involved in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, a far more engaging drama that's never convincingly connected to the allegedly dangerous mambo. There's no doubt Chao the dancer feels right at home in the world of her book, but her theme—the rediscovery of her character's Cuban roots—is lost amid the tangles of convoluted plot.
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