Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler Contributor(s): Herrera, Juan Felipe (Author) |
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ISBN: 0816522154 ISBN-13: 9780816522156 Publisher: University of Arizona Press
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: May 2002 Click for more in this series: Camino del Sol |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - Hispanic American |
Dewey: B |
LCCN: 2001003289 |
Series: Camino del Sol |
Physical Information: 0.51" H x 6.16" W x 8.96" L (0.65 lbs) 191 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Mexican - Ethnic Orientation - Hispanic |
Features: Illustrated, Table of Contents |
Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 07/22/2002 pg. 171 Library Journal 08/01/2002 pg. 101 Multicultural Review 03/01/2003 pg. 67 Univ PR Books for Public Libry 01/01/2003 pg. 76 - Strongly Recommended Library Journal 08/12/2002 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Raucous adobe hearts and urban violet mascara. Televised immigration games and ethnic sit-coms. Chile con karma served on a bed of race. In a startling melange of poetry, prose, journal entries, and even a screenplay, Zen Chicano desperado Juan Felipe Herrera fixes his gaze on his own life and times to craft his most personal work to date. Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler is a river of faces and phrases, jottings and reflections--a personal pilgrimage and collective parade of love, mock-prophecy, and chiste. Tuning in voices from numerous time zones, languages, and minds, Herrera recalls his childhood and coming of age, his participation in the Chicano Movement, and the surreal aspects of postmodern America. He uses broad strokes to paint a historical, social, and familial portrait that moves from the twilight of the nineteenth century to the dawn of the twenty-first, then takes up a finer brush to etch the eternal tension between desire and frustration, hope and disillusionment, violence and tenderness. Here are transamerican sutras spanning metrocenters from Mexico City to San Francisco, or slinking across the border from Ju rez to El Paso. Outrageous, rhythmic lists--"Foodstuffs They Never Told Us About," "Things Religion Makes Me Do"--that fire the imagination. Celebrations of his Plutomobile that "runs on ham hawks & bird grease," and of Chicano inventions such as cilantro aftershave and "the art of eating Vicks VapoRub with your dedos." Pushing forms to the edge of possibility while forcing readers to rethink reality as well as language, Herrera invokes childhoods and neighborhoods, stand-up clowns and Movimiento gypsies, grandmothers of the bu uelo kitchen and tragicomic soliloquies of dizzy-headed outcasts of paradise. Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler is a crucible of flavorful language meant to be rolled lazily on the mind's tongue--and then swallowed whole to let its hot and savory sweetness fill your soul. |
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