Faith In Carlos Gomez: A Memoir Of Salsa, Sex And Salvation - Softcover

Dunn, Samantha

4.09

69 ratings by Goodreads

9780805080162: Faith In Carlos Gomez: A Memoir Of Salsa, Sex And Salvation

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805080163 ISBN 13: 9780805080162

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 2005

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A writer's all-consuming passion for salsa opens the door to an unexpected world in a nonfiction tale with all the sexiness and humor of the best chick lit

Samantha Dunn is a horsewoman who's not exactly graceful-more comfortable in a barn than in a ballroom. Her introduction to salsa dancing happens by chance in a kitchen during a dinner with a blacksmith from South America. To impress this handsome man on their next date, she decides to take a dance lesson. But then the unpredictable happens: from the first steps, something about the movement and the exotic, sliding music takes hold of her.

From that point on, Dunn throws herself into the salsa culture. She soaks up the Spanish language-an easy feat in her home city of Los Angeles-and begins a peculiar relationship with her dance instructor, a local salsa celebrity. What started off as a lark becomes a quest that reframes her life, changing the way she thinks about her body, her relationships with men and women, her personal history, and even her country. She is hearing tropical rhythms in her head, taking lessons, buying Lycra, and cruising unexplored sections of the vast Southern California metropolis on weeknights in search of the sweaty, packed salsa clubs. And as Latino culture becomes ever more influential in California, she is recognizing the changes in her own life mirrored in the city she thought she knew.

Faith in Carlos Gomez is a story of a woman discovering love-for salsa dancing, for music, for a culture, and for Carlos Gomez-and determined to learn whatever steps she'll need to keep up.

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About the Author:

Samantha Dunn is the author of Not by Accident and the novel Failing Paris, which was a finalist for the PEN/West Award. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, InStyle, Shape, Self, and numerous other national publications. She lives in Southern
California.

From Publishers Weekly:

If your heart beats to the rhythm of salsa—or tango or waltz, for that matter—you'll empathize with Dunn's sudden passion for the Cuban dance, despite her preternatural clumsiness, and one can particularly admire her courage in dancing despite having a metal rod in one leg, the legacy of a horse-riding accident. But this memoir is not for devotees: they already know the nightly routine of following the salsa trail from club to club, the complexities of the rhythm and movement, the subtleties of leading and following—all a revelation to Dunn. And frankly, Dunn's constant self-deprecations about her lack of dancing ability and her I'm-just-a-cowgirl-and-don't-know-how-to-attract-a-man pose are more annoying than charming, particularly after two desirable men leap into bed with her in the opening sections. Yet this fairly typical tale of the search for love and happiness has beautiful patches of writing (Dunn's novel Failing Paris was a PEN/West award finalist), especially when she captures the magic of, and the longing for, the dance ("I watch serious salseras, and I ache to know that kind of movement within my own body," as if it might "unearth something long buried") or elegizing the true love of her life, her Thoroughbred, Harley.
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