Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility - Hardcover

Santana, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826324355 ISBN 13: 9780826324351

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 2002

Synopsis

It's April 1969, and fourteen-year-old Yolanda Sahagún can hardly wait to see her favorite brother, Chuy, newly returned from Vietnam. But when he arrives at the Welcome Home party the family has prepared in his honor it's clear that the war has changed him. The transformation of Chuy is only one of the challenges that Yolanda and the rest of her family face. This powerful coming-of-age novel, winner of the 1999 Chicano/Latino Literary Contest, is a touching and funny account of a summer that is still remembered as a crossroads in American life. Yolanda and her brothers and sisters learn how to be men and women and how to be Americans as well as Mexican Americans.

"A captivating portrayal . . . .the novel is challenging, warm, provocative, often humorous, always engaging."--Rudolfo Anaya

"Patricia Santana's Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquillity will take you on an exhilarating journey through the tortured landscape of the late 1960s, and show you how the stench of a brutal foreign war and revolutionary winds at home swept into the lives on one Mexican American family in Southern California. . . . Santana takes her place among those new Chicana writers who are refashioning the face of American literature for the twenty-first century."--Jorge Mariscal, University of California, San Diego, author of Aztlan and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Santana lives in San Diego.

Reviews

Seasoned with salty dashes of Spanish and radiant with family warmth and affection, Santana's 1999 Chicano/Latino Literary Contest-winning first novel tells the tender coming-of-age tale of a young Chicana in 1969 San Diego. Fourteen-year-old Yolanda "Yoli" Sahag£n, the seventh of nine children, is overjoyed to be planning the coming-home celebration for her favorite brother, Chuy, a soldier returning from the Vietnam War. But when he arrives, he is distant, despondent and violent, clearly not the same man who was drafted years before. Early the next morning, he inexplicably leaves town on his prized motorcycle for points unknown. This development disappoints and worries Yolanda, who is meanwhile battling adolescent troubles of her own: bad skin, sprouting breasts and budding love for popular, timid schoolmate Francisco. When Chuy eventually returns home once again, he remains distant, disrespectful and even cruel, hurling anti-Mexican slurs at friends and family. His much-foreshadowed emotional meltdown occurs when a traditional night game of hide-and-seek goes heinously awry, forcing him to evade police prosecution and go into hiding. The author injects a surprising amount of humor into this often sobering tale, mostly through her account of Yoli's escapades as she tries to stay afloat on the turbulent waters of puberty. Wonderfully realistic dialogue, Yoli's candid first-person narration and a feel-good conclusion replete with wedding bells round out this remarkably touching story about the ramifications of war on a shatterproof Mexican family. (Feb.)Forecast: Santana has her finger on the pulse of Mexican-American life in Southern California, and local sales should be strong. A few reviews in major publications would go a long way toward getting the book into readers' hands in other parts of the country.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

A Mexican American version of Born on the Fourth of July, Santana's first novel is a charming coming-of-age story set in San Diego in 1969. The Sahagun family throws a party for their son Chuy, who has just returned home from Vietnam, and Yolanda, anxious to see her favorite brother again, is saddened and frightened when it becomes clear that the war has had a lasting effect on him. Chuy soon disappears on a motorcycle for several months only to return with long hair, a beard, and an empty look in his eyes that worries both family and neighbors. He is seen howling late at night and hanging around the local high school, and soon he becomes the center of gossip in the community. After a run-in with the police, Chuy goes into hiding, and Yolanda, who experiences emotional changes of her own as she becomes a young woman, hopes to find him before he or anyone else gets hurt. Santana has crafted a fresh look at post-Vietnam family life. Carlos Orellana
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826324355
• ISBN 13: 9780826324351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276