Purchase
Texas Tech University Press
March 2010
On Sale: March 15, 2010
196 pages
ISBN: 089672672X
EAN: 9780896726727
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction
From poet and performance artist Tim Z. Hernandez comes a harrowing depiction of the drug abuse, poverty, and desperation that play out in the lives of a humble farming community in California's heartland--a region known mostly for its agricultural wealth, and less for the stark contradictions overshadowed by its Golden State image. Seventeen-year-old Tlaloc, whose namesake is the Aztec god of fertility as well as destruction, chronicles a gritty landscape of wrenching contrasts: the abundant ''breadbasket of the world'' and its intensifying hopelessness; the daily grind of underpaid workers in a land of plenty; raw cucaracha lives and campesino dreams; love tragically gone awry in the shadow of sweetly aromatic blossoms. Tlaloc's world is populated by wetbacks, tweekers, white trash--myriad nameless nobodies who live, love, and loathe, unseen by the other half. Even as he navigates his closest relationships with caution, Tlaloc seeks his escape in writing, crafting haunting portraits of those around him and narrating their struggles with brutal, graphic honesty.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - October 11, 2010
| 
© 2003-2026