9780393336450
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Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America share button
Robert Shapard
Genre Fiction Books & Literature
Format Paperback
Dimensions 5.50 (w) x 8.20 (h) x 0.90 (d)
Pages 336
Publisher Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication Date March 2010
ISBN 9780393336450
Book ISBN 10 039333645X
About Book

For readers who love great short-short stories, this bountiful anthology is the best of Latin American and U.S. Latino writers.

Following on the success of the Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction series, Robert Shapard and James Thomas join with Ray Gonzalez in selecting works that each present a complete story in less than 1,500 words. Luisa Valenzuela, one of Latin America’s most lauded writers, provides the introduction. Readers will delight in finding stars such as Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, and Roberto Bolaño alongside recognized masters like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, and Jorge Luis Borges. They will discover work from Andrea Saenz, Daniel Alarcón, and Alicita Rodriguez, as well as other writers on the rise.

In Julio Ortega’s “Migrations,” a Peruvian writer explores how immigrant speech and ethnic origins are a force of meaning that evolves beyond language. In “Hair,” by Hilma Contreras, a Caribbean pharmacist is driven mad by a young woman’s luxuriant tresses. These stories stretch from gritty reality to the fantastical in a mix that is moving, challenging, humorous, artful, sometimes political, and altogether spectacular.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly

After the Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction anthologies, editors Shapard and Thomas teamed with Gonzalez to create this stunning compilation of short shorts (under 1,500 words) by venerated and emerging Latino writers. In Andrea Saenz's “Everyone's Abuelo Can't Have Ridden with Pancho Villa,” the narrator's Grandma Jefa discredits the family legends while holding fast to her own: a prescient dream about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Luna Calderon writes about Dia de Los Muertos or, as the social studies teacher in her story calls it, “Day Ah Dallas Mare Toes.” In “Imagining Bisbee,” Alicita Rodriguez recounts the making of a ghost town: “Bisbee's inhabitants want to disappear. They use P.O. boxes and first names. They hide under straw mats and melt into the horizon.” In “Miss Clairol,” Helena María Viramontes describes the transformative makeup ritual of a mother: “The only way Champ knows her mother's true hair color is by her roots, which, like death, inevitably rise to the truth.” The spirited mix of writers also includes Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, and Jorge Luis Borges. (Mar.)
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