Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation - Hardcover

Santos, John Phillip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670868086 ISBN 13: 9780670868087

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1999

Synopsis

An evocative memoir of growing up in San Antonio, Texas, along the Mexican border interweaves family reminiscences with the history of Texas and Mexico to chronicle the story of one Mexican family and its rich blend of Mayan, Aztecan, Spanish, and American heritage. 20,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

Review:

Mexican American journalist John Phillip Santos's lyrical and loving memoir explores his family's history in magnificent prose touched with the singing cadences of his Spanish-language heritage yet vibrant with the energy of American English. It's a combination utterly suited to his native San Antonio, where las viejitas--the little old ladies of the Garcia and Santos families--ruled over their children and grandchildren with the toughness and grandeur of the Mexico they left during the revolution of 1914. "Poised between those ancient Indio origins from the south ... and our Mestizo future in the north," these new Texans made Mexico live for their descendants in the magical stories and folkloric practices of an older culture. Yet there was also a sense of secrets kept and cherished possessions left behind, of people who had traveled far and traveled light. The "wind of story" was also "a wind of forgetting," and as Santos probes his heritage, he comes to understand that "it is okay to move on and forget." Nonetheless, this is a book that restores to memory the drama not just of a single family but of an entire people whose past is more closely entwined with that of the United States than some Americans care to remember. Santos depicts them with care and dignity. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

John Phillip Santos, born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, is the first Mexican American Rhodes Scholar whose awards include the Academy of American Poets' Prize at Notre Dame and the Oxford Prize for fiction. His articles on Latino culture have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and the San Antonio Express-News. Writer and producer of more than forty television documentaries for CBS-TV and PBS-TV, two of them Emmy nominees, he lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670868086
• ISBN 13: 9780670868087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288