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"Travesuras de la Niña Mala" 2006 "The Bad Girl: a Novel" English Translation, 2007 By Mario Vargas Llosa Also by Vargas Llosa: "The Green House," 1966, "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," 1982, "The Feast of the Goat," 2002 This heart-wrenching love story from Peru's best-known author follows Lima native Ricardo Somocurcio as he achieves his only ambition in life: to live in Paris. Ricardo is hardworking and likeable. A loner by nature, a chance encounter with his childhood love interest throws his steady existence working as a translator into turmoil. The uproar brought by the "niña mala" continues throughout the 45 years and four continents the novel spans. Living up to her title nickname, "la niña mala" is cold, calculating and nearly impossible to like. While Ricardo's flair for languages allows him to alter between five different tongues with ease, the niña mala is equally adept at changing her personality, nationality and love interests to best enhance her social stature. Her repeated travesuras throughout the 375-page narrative grow tedious; although Vargas Llosa's masterful prose is engaging. Vargas Llosa is a frequent mention for the Nobel Prize for Literature, though he has not yet won. A novelist, a literary critic, a playwright, a journalist and a former presidential candidate in Peru, the author accordingly lets his globe-trotting characters in "Travesuras" step into the political and cultural movements in the many countries they visit. Vargas Llosa fits in commentary on the Cuban revolution, the rise and fall of swinging London, Tokyo's red light district, and Peru's economic collapse in the 1980s. Non-detail oriented readers may lose interest in the historical and geographical references, but the commentary and changing settings fill out the narrative that is otherwise exclusively devoted to the amorous misadventures of the two main characters. "Once Upon a Quinceañera" 2007 By Julia Alvarez Also by Alvarez: "How the García Girls Lost their Accents," 1991, "In the Time of the Butterflies," 1994 "Saving the World," 2006 Alvarez's debut nonfiction work leaves no aspect of the Latina 15th birthday tradition untouched, though the author personally remains conflicted about quinceañeras. Alvarez bemoans the enormous cost of the lavish celebrations and wishes working-class families would invest in college funds rather than DJs and hummer limos. As a feminist, she also questions the relevancy of a ceremony traditionally meant to announce a 15-year-old girl's readiness for marriage and wonders if it is right to offer princess dresses and fairytale celebrations in an age in which statistically no prince charming awaits and the tale may not end happily ever after. Yet Alvarez, who has no children herself, also swells with a sort of maternal pride for the Latina girls who come of age before her eyes at the various quinceañeras she attends, and she finds hope in their accomplishments, talents and ambitions. Alvarez's many interviews provide fascinating insight, if they do ultimately raise more questions than they answer. Maria," a Dominican cake baker in Queens scoffs at the idea of having had a quinceañera herself in the rural Dominican Republic, though she makes a living off of baking for the events in today's New York City. At a wealthy girl's quincieñera in Santo Domingo, Alvarez joins a group of aunts and godmothers marveling at the changes in the tradition while huddling in the back of a pulsing discoteca. Scantily clad teenagers dance to hip hop and anxiously await a reggaeton performance to top off a night in which no father-daughter first dance occurred, no last doll was presented, and no flat shoes were exchanged for high heels. Back in the United States, Alvarez is also wary of the "blown up Disney quinceañera," a materialistic spectacle influenced by American consumer culture and MTV's my "Super Sweet 16". That is not to say that Alvarez thinks the quinceañera should go unchanged; that it should evolve is in fact her sole conclusion. She fears, however, that the current evolutions are not building a ritual with the girls' best interests in mind. In discussing next-generation Latinas, Alvarez's narrative reveals her own lonely struggle to balance two cultures and two homelands as a Dominican teenager in 1960s New York. Alvarez is convinced that Latinas now more than ever need what her own childhood lacked: guidance in navigating the tricky path of growing up Latina in today's complex world. She is unsure of whether quinceañera celebrations can help provide this support, but Alvarez shares some of the optimism about the tradition that is so abundant in the young quinceañeras she interviews. Review by: Caroline Stauffer "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" 2007 Also by Diaz: "Drown" 1996 (short story collection) Dominican-American author Junot Diaz casts a super-nerd as the title character in "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," the long awaited follow-up to his acclaimed short story collection "Drown." Oscar, the afro-sporting "gordo asceroso," provides the perfect foil to the book's representation of Dominican macho culture. He isn't exactly embraced by anyone at the American Rutgers University either. This debut novel in fact presents much more than Oscar's pitiful life story. It also transcends the accounts of his mother, sister and Yunior, Oscar's only friend. Diaz integrates his native country's lengthy history with its modern political reality while delving into the American immigrant experience he himself underwent in New Jersey. All of this is under the foreboding auspices of the fukú, the curse that was supposedly unleashed on Hispaniola 450 years ago and has plagued Oscar's family for generations. Diaz unapologetically peppers his narrative with Dominicanisms, offering readers no explanation when his fulanos speak of their pana, eat chicharron or dique mock pariguayos. He also crafts dialogue in American street-speak for the chapters set in Paterson, New Jersey and Washington Heights, Manhattan. Diaz is in fact known for blatantly ignoring traditional grammar, preferring to use what he calls the language of the ghetto in its profanity-laden and dialogue-infused glory. Yet he is hailed by establishment publications including The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker. Diaz, an associate professor at MIT, is considered to be an essential voice in modern world literature as one of surprisingly few authors creating a genre of immigrant fiction. Critics have mostly called the novel a comedy, but I'm not sure "Oscar Wao" quite fits this bill. Diaz's edgy attitude and quick wit do incite some chuckles, but the characters, exaggerated as they may be, are facing issues that are too real to laugh away. Diaz ultimately leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the family's fortune is actually controlled by the fukú, or if the source of this comedy of errors can be otherwise identified among the themes of racism, fallout from dictatorship, loneliness or the quest for identity. Review by: Caroline Stauffer |
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