|
A fiery, accomplished literary debut,
Loosing My Espanish chronicles the struggles and vicissitudes
of the men and women of a tiny Cuban-American community in
Chicago who are haunted by history, memory, and myth as they
encounter the American dream. Óscar Delossantos has
recently been dismissed for a perceived indiscretion from
the Jesuit boys’ high school where he has taught for
twenty-two years. As his last semester comes to an end, he
gives a daring, extended final history lesson: a kaleidoscopic
portrait of Cuba as it exists in the hearts and minds of
its exiled and dispossessed.
In Óscar’s tale, the weather is a system of
extremes; a boy disappears through a hole in the ice; a tender
love story unfolds; a murder of crows wreaks havoc; an old
woman at the onset of Alzheimer’s burns down her house;
sex, religion, family lore, gossip, and both official and
reconfigured history all play their part. Throughout Óscar’s
raw, sometimes hallucinatory, lyrical testament– at
once heartbreaking and ennobling–he reveals not only
the shape and substance of his own life, but also the hard,
vital, vivid life of his entire community.
Thematically ambitious, linguistically inventive, at once
visceral and refined, Loosing My Espanish announces the arrival
of a thrilling new voice in American fiction.
H. G. Carrillo’s work has appeared
in The Kenyon Review and Glimmer Train, among other journals
and magazines. A Ph.D. candidate and instructor in the Department
of English at Cornell University, he divides his time between
Ithaca, New York, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
|
