Category Archives: Blog

I’ve started Days of Awe and so far so good. I’m enjoying the book so far but perhaps I should have waited a week after reading Oscar Wao to start a new book.

It happens, especially to me. If the previous book was good, it skews my opinion. Already I’m finding it difficult to follow the text, although the imagery is good. I’m not exactly in love with the protagonist nor am I liking or understanding her point of view. There are also a lot of explainers making it read like a history book. (yes, one of the characters in a Cuban Jew and so explaining how that is possible is part of telling the story. But I feel like it is a history lesson.)

But I’m still in the early stages of reading the book. Plenty of time for things to turn around and for me to forget about a certain Dominican-American character I had grown to love.

I finished Oscar Wao yesterday and was so sad. Not because one of the characters dies (although you probably know which one) or because Oscar’s family has gone through some major fuku, evil eye mess, or even because the couple didn’t end up together at the end.

I was sad because it was all over. That world that Junot Diaz created between English and Spanish – not so much Spanglish but not life on the Moor either. That world where he starts a sentence in English, pops in two Spanish words, and finish in street slang (Negro, please!). That world that I understood with my heart and my soul that I didn’t need to have explained to me at all. (When I started this little project, it was about rediscovering my voice and books like these ensure that journey’s success.)

So brief summary – Oscar, Dominican, ghetto nerd, falls in love and bravely commits suicide because his family, dating back to his grandfather has gotten the WORST case of fuku (i.e evil eye) ever in the history of literature. Ok, my summary is too simple but for details, read the book. You’ll thank me for it.

Anyway, so as I was reflecting on the book, its characters and plot, I couldn’t help but think… if Oscar de Leon was Cuban, he would so have seen a curandera/santera/whatever and this ugly case of evil eye would be gone. Done. (But then there would be no book, so I can’t complain. )

Down to the nitty gritty:
Junot’s voice in this book, expanded from his short story in the New Yorker, is crisp and direct. You instantly believe Yunior, the storyteller, because he speaks like a person, not just a character. No other character could have told this story but Yunior. Not Belicia or Lola or even Oscar himself. Yunior is far enough away to tell it like it is but close enough to know the insights needed to understand why Oscar’s life was wondrous and brief. Yunior, although not officially part of a family, is as good as a brother.

The book has heart, lots of it, and oozes with style. I adore the way dialog was handled — no quotation marks at all. It forces the reader to PAY ATTENTION because people are talking. There is no breezing through this book, it is a meal on paper, complete with desert on page 330 where you find out how life goes on. Lola has Isis (no relation) who soon learns about Uncle Oscar and the evilness that whirled around the family.

This is a story about family life in the Caribbean, as poignant as Julia Alvarez and as necessary to the written word as ink. It’s also about Diaspora who continue with life as if the island was only a road trip away. It’s also about American life and straddling cultures and worlds.An important story for all peoples to know about.

Next book: Days of Awe by Achy Obejas

Summary from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com:
Born the day Castro came to power, the protagonist of this thoughtful novel comes with her mother and father to the United States when she is two, but cannot ignore her tangled Cuban roots. Alejandra San Jos‚ and her parents, Nena and Enrique, settle in Chicago, where Enrique works as a literary translator and Nena grows roses and sunflowers. Their neighborhood is predominantly Jewish, and as Ale grows up she picks up on small signs that her family has something in common with its neighbors. It is not until she is an adult, however, working as an interpreter, that she discovers that her father is Jewish, the grandson of a flamboyantly Jewish hero of the Cuban war of independence; her mother, though devoutly Catholic, has Jewish ancestors, too. On a series of trips to Cuba, Ale comes to know her father’s oldest friend, Mois‚s Menach, and through him learns her family’s history. In her stays with the Menachs, and her charged friendship with Mois‚s’s son-in-law, Orlando, she learns about contemporary Cuba and gradually comes to terms with her own identity. The searching narrative digs deep into questions of faith, conversion, nationality and history, exploring philosophical issues in human terms. Though sharp, cleverly observed details bring Havana and Chicago to life, the novel is richer in ideas than in depictions of place. Obejas (Memory Mambo) is concerned most of all with relationships between Ale and her lovers, male and female; between Ale and her secretive father. If the near-plotless narrative drags in places, it is redeemed by Obejas’s clear-eyed, remarkably fresh meditation on familiar but perennially vital themes. 3-city author tour.

I have a new member of my “list”.

Well, I have several lists that I use other than the obvious ones like grocery, to-do, goals, etc…

This list is of my favorite books ever. And I mean EVER. These are the books that when I read them stirred something deep in me and literally frighted me (not figuratively. I’m talking about I saw the book and I was spooked). Not surprisingly, it’s a two book list. Well, now three.

Junot Diaz‘s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao joined the list when Belicia learned a lesson she couldn’t avoid. Brilliant, heart breaking, wincing pain for her.(Seriously, can’t tell you about it. Read the book.)

But since I’m not technically done yet I can’t induct this marvelous piece of literature to my list. (induction includes buying the best copy my ill gotten means will allow, placement in my personal library, and endless recommendations to the entire English and Spanish speaking worlds.)

So far, this book rocks. I could give a summary but my friend and fellow writer Johnny Diaz (not related but still wonderful in his own right. His second book is coming out soon.) did an outstanding job for The Boston Globe. I’ll give my full impressions on this book when I’m done. (Which reminds me. I need to beg the Wichita Library to let me keep this book for one more week. It’s due Wednesday.)

Note to self: I don’t know what muses Junot uses but I gotta get me some of them. Chico, cono!

It’s going swimmingly. The list keeps growing though and that’s a good thing.

When I started this, it was to go on a journey to find myself and my voice, to reclaim what I had lost when life got heavier. I know that by the end of the year, we’ll find each other again.

So if you want to keep track with me and what I’m reading, check out my Goodreads.com bookshelves by clicking here.

I’m half way through Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

Dear Dagoberto Gilb,

You don’t know me but… I love you.

My critique group is awesome. I love them because they are so into writing like I am.
Any how, we do starters at the beginning of our weekly sessions. It gets us to write outside our zone but mostly gets us to shut up and settle down so that we can get some work done. Great job, Linda.

This was this week’s starter

Prompt: “You don’t have enough points, sir”
My work: “Come on! I’m only short one point!”
Malcolm pleaded with the woman behind the counter. Her bouffant bun sat on top of her head and her beady little eyes peered through her brown rimmed glasses.
“This is not a basketball game. Nor is it Weight Watchers. A 70 is needed. You will have to wait one month. Next!”
Her high pitched voice annoyed Malcolm’s ear drums as he shuffled toward the exit. He had to come to terms that his first visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles ended in failure.

Let me start off by saying that I love Double Indemnity, the movie. It’s classic noir, Barbara Stanwyck is great, despite the bad wig, and Fred Murray is slick. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Did I say I love it?

But the book by James Cain? Oh dear, the book.

I finished the 100 page novel today during lunch. After I shut book, I felt cheated. As if I had watched a movie I didn’t like and wanted my money back.

I think it was the last page and a half that did it. But let me start from the beginning.

First off, DI is your typical hard boiled crime novel from the 30s — a type of Jack Webb, just the facts, not too much description but just enough type novel. I liked it. Didn’t love it but I saw why Tony chose it for PD (Picasso’s Dragon). The plot moved, fast and furious, and made 100 pages seem like 40 pages.

Have no doubt, Cain is not a poet. But that’s okay. As he describes places and people, he just tells you what you need to know — the bloody red drapes, the house that spilled over the mountain, the freckles on Phyllis’ face. The strength of his word choice, his diction, is what builds the imagery. I think that’s what allows the plot to move so quickly.

So I’m reading and reading and I’m enjoying the plots and twists when the final page and a half starts becoming this literary extended metaphor comparing one of the characters to …who? The lady in Rime of the Ancient Mariner, who, if memory serves, is rolling dice with death to see who gets the crew in the story. The woman, in a red top and a ghostly white face, represents a fate worse than death. She wins the Mariner (who has an Albatross around his neck.)

Yes. Huff=Mariner. Phyllis=Death woman. Killing the husband for insurance money=Albatross

The metaphor doesn’t escape me at all. In fact, it’s interesting and, if I were an English major in college, could easily become a term paper.

But come on! Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Seriously?

I know that I’m suppose to love that. I do. But after reading 98 pages of intrigue and plot twist and, essentially sticking it to the establishment (yeah insurance fraud!) the Mariner stuff was out of place.

So this lame ending , which was knocked around in my head for hours today, was also lame in the 30s. Check out this quote from Cain himself, as he spoke about the movie version he wrote with Raymond Chandler.

“It’s the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of. Wilder’s ending was much better than my ending, and his device for letting the guy tell the story by taking out the office dictating machine – I would have done it if I had thought of it. There are situations in the movie that can make your hands get wet.” (from On Sunset Boulevard by Ed Sikov)

Hum? Guy shot by adulteress girlfriend vs Ancient Mariner suicide pact? Tricky.

Next book: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. (I got the Central Library copy. There’s one more at Evergreen. And yes they spelled his name wrong. “Boladno”).

Heres Amazon’s two cents:

The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation, but his novel The Savage Detectives is a lot closer to Y Tu Mamá También than it is to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, full of inside jokes about Latin American literati that you don’t have to understand to enjoy, The Savage Detectives is a companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It’s the first of Bolaño’s two giant masterpieces to be translated into English (the second, 2666, is due out next year), and you can see how he’s influenced an era. –Tom Nissley

I’ve returned to blog land on behalf of my always working mind.

You see, I’m four chapters away from finishing my book. No, not the NaNoWriMo book, the one before it. And I’m excited. Fearful but excited.

So since I’m close to being able to add the word novelist to my increasing list of titles, I thought that documenting the process, as well as my writing life, would help.

So here I am. Blogging, again. Baring my fragile soul to the world. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

The first entry? Picasso’s Dragon. This was started by my friend and novelist Tony Diaz in Houston. PD is a glorified book club really but so much more. I would call it a journey. His goal is to read good writing, the stuff that isn’t taught in MFA programs or became bestsellers on some list. He does this in hopes to revive his writing, to elevate his skill or, put in terms I would say, “he wants to up his game so he can school people while pushing the game to a new level.”

The dragon’s goal? Read one book a week for a year. Can he do it? I know for a fact I can’t. The first book is Fight Club which they’ll be discussing during the Nuestra Palabra radio show Jan 15 on KPFT 90.1 Houston.

In support of Tony and Picasso’s Dragon, I pledged to read Double Indemnity by James Cain for the mid-February show. It’s a short read, about 100 pages in my copy, and it’s perfect in its lack of description and momentum. (I’ll talk about that in a later blog). I can’t wait to talk about it on air with Tony!

After pledging to read this book, I created my own reading list. My purpose is different than Picasso’s Dragon, however. I need to read to remember my experiences as a nerdy girl growing up in East Harris County and to remember the type of writer I want to become eventually. It’s really a search for who I was and who I want to become on the page. I’ve wanted to write book for as far back as I can remember and even as a less social child growing up in the land of cheerleaders and popular girls, I clung to books as if they were my best friends. It wasn’t until I was in college that I shed the nerd/geek girl skin for outgoing, fun loving, sorority girl with a talent for writing.

So I’ve composed my own list and I’m calling it Project: Finding La Diva. I’m not reading 52 books in a year like Tony, but I’m reading books that I’ve been meaning to read from authors with voices that I enjoyed or think have something to say. This is an attempt to find the inner nerdy geeky girl I was, give her a hug and say “it’s okay to be yourself. Being popular is overrated.”

Editor’s note(3/23/08): For the most up-to-date list check out the column on the right.

Here’s my list (in no particular order)
Double Indemnity
The Bonesetter’s Daughter
The Savage Detectives
Loving Che
Water for Elephants
The Aguero Sisters
Days of Awe
The Things They Carried
Peel Me Like An Onion
Anatomy of a Murder
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
The House of the Spirits
Tale of Two Cities
Wuthering Heights
Anna Karenina
Of Love and Other Demons or Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Los Amigos Que Perdi
In Love and In Trouble
I, Rigoberta Menchu

(Special thanks to the Wichita Public Library for having the titles I don’t already own)

This is a fluid list and titles could jump on or off at the drop of a hat. Anyone is welcomed to join in or make suggestions.

Viva Picasso’s Dragon and Finding La Diva!