El Paso Del Norte: Stories On The Border (Western Literature Series) (Western Literature and Fiction Series) - Softcover

Richard Yañez

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087417533X ISBN 13: 9780874175332

Publisher: University of Nevada Press, 2003

Synopsis

The Chicano characters in Richard Yanez's debut story collection live in El Paso's Lower Valley but inhabit a number of borders - between two countries, two languages, and two cultures, between childhood and manhood, life and death. The teenaged narrator of "Desert Vista" copes with a new school and a first love while negotiating the boundaries between his family's tenuous middle-class status and the working-class community in which they have come to live. Tony Amoroza, the protagonist of "Amoroza Tires," wrestles with the overwhelming grief from his wife's death until an unexpected legacy prompts him with new faith. Maria del Valle, "La Loquita," the central character of "Lucero's Mkt.," crosses the border into madness while her neighbors watch, gossip, and try to offer - or refuse - aid.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Yanez has taught at Antioch College, Colorado College, and has been a Fellow at Saint Mary's College Center for Women's InterCultural Leadership.

Review:

With a quiet grace and the gravity of those whose lives are permanently on the edge, the characters in the debut collection offer an unvarnished look at Chicano life. The types are largely familiar...but the honesty with which they appear is redeeming. Solidly written: tales that are at their best when giving glimmers of transcendence.-Kirkus

"Yañez's Chicano voice is unsentimental. His sketches remind the reader that prosperity is not measured by either class or happiness; it is measured by the dimensionality of our experience in community." --Southwest BookViews

"Among the strengths of the collection is the author's ability to convincingly deliver these very different voices and stages in life with depth and nuance, sidestepping stereotypes in every case." --Gussie Fauntleroy, Santa Fe New Mexican

"Yañez has tapped into the universal experience of these people, linked their desperate searches for happiness with the working-class characters captured before in Dublin, in New York circa 1905, in Carver's misty Northwest. ...  I'd love to read about them ten years from now." --Southwestern American Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 087417533X
• ISBN 13: 9780874175332
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152