La Quinta Soledad
Silviana Wood
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La Quinta Soledad del Valle, the title character of Silviana Wood’s epic novel, lives quietly in the hardscrabble Barrio Anita in Tucson, Arizona. She gets up early each morning to wait for her newspaper to be delivered, earns her keep typing letters and forms for young men caught up in the criminal justice system, and meanders in her mind between her memories and the present. Her life has been punctuated by trauma that she senses but can’t recall. Something happened, first sending her to Salinas, California when she was a little girl to live with a family friend, and then something else occurred that resulted in her being rushed back to Arizona to her grandmother Nana Conchita’s house. But the details are beyond her grasp. She doesn’t know who her father was, nor can she piece together other important events in her family’s history. La Quinta mostly lived with Nana Conchita while growing up because her mother had neither the time nor inclination to care for her. Decades later, her mother’s fading memory forces La Quinta to confront the lessons she learned from her often-tyrannical grandmother and the uncaring actions of friends, neighbors, and family. Her four older sisters, trapped in their own web of memories and reality, can’t help her. Nana Conchita had her own grievances: a husband who cheated on her, a daughter who she believed loved singing, dancing, and men more than her own children, and a fear of the outside world that has contributed to her becoming alienated from everyone around her. Suffering from the unbearable pain of a deteriorated hip, Nana Conchita spends her time praying to her saints and pointing out La Quinta’s many faults. Yet her love for her granddaughter shines throughout the novel. |
La Quinta deals with her precarious economic status and cynical views of the world with humor. She had a long affair with a married man that ended badly when her friend sleeps with him and carries a deep list of grudges ranging from a boy who stood her up at a junior high dance to the newspaper delivery man who can never get the paper for her as promised before her morning coffee.
A must read for anyone interested in twentieth century life in the Borderlands as well as fans of Latina fiction, the book is part novel, part memoir. It is based on the experiences of Ms. Wood, a well-known Tucson-based dramatist, writer, and teacher. Her weaving of memories with fiction immerses readers in a compelling world of reality and imagination as well as presenting an interesting portrait of barrio life. Through Ms. Wood’s skillful writing, we taste, hear, and feel La Quinta’s environment.
The scope of the book stretches from Veracruz to the San Francisco Bay Area with most of the action taking place within the large desert landscape of La Quinta’s mind. It ends with a family road trip to Magdalena de Kino, Senora that becomes a romp when past tragedies collide with frenzied pilgrims as La Quinta and her sisters seek forgiveness for their sins and La Quinta finally understands her painful personal history.
Though it is over six hundred pages long, the novel is worth the time it takes to read it to the end. Some may find the many Spanish sentences daunting, but most of the passages are subsequently translated into English and a close read of many quickly becomes humorous because of the way various characters try to speak a language they have only passing familiarity with. La Quinta’s somewhat bilingual world comes alive through this writing, and we experience what it was like to live with one foot in Mexico, the other in the United States. Readers will know what it is to exist simultaneously in the past and present which may well be one of the defining characteristics of all Latinx people.
Ms. Wood has produced one of the best debut novels of the past decade. We should all hope that she has a couple of more books ready to share with us.
A native of Tucson, Arizona, Silviana Wood is known for her bilingual comedies and dramas as well as for being a storyteller, actor, director, and teacher. She has twice won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California, Irvine and her 2016, Barrio Dreams/ Selected Plays was published by the University of Arizona Press.
La Quinta Soledad is a publication by Aztlan Libre Press.
A must read for anyone interested in twentieth century life in the Borderlands as well as fans of Latina fiction, the book is part novel, part memoir. It is based on the experiences of Ms. Wood, a well-known Tucson-based dramatist, writer, and teacher. Her weaving of memories with fiction immerses readers in a compelling world of reality and imagination as well as presenting an interesting portrait of barrio life. Through Ms. Wood’s skillful writing, we taste, hear, and feel La Quinta’s environment.
The scope of the book stretches from Veracruz to the San Francisco Bay Area with most of the action taking place within the large desert landscape of La Quinta’s mind. It ends with a family road trip to Magdalena de Kino, Senora that becomes a romp when past tragedies collide with frenzied pilgrims as La Quinta and her sisters seek forgiveness for their sins and La Quinta finally understands her painful personal history.
Though it is over six hundred pages long, the novel is worth the time it takes to read it to the end. Some may find the many Spanish sentences daunting, but most of the passages are subsequently translated into English and a close read of many quickly becomes humorous because of the way various characters try to speak a language they have only passing familiarity with. La Quinta’s somewhat bilingual world comes alive through this writing, and we experience what it was like to live with one foot in Mexico, the other in the United States. Readers will know what it is to exist simultaneously in the past and present which may well be one of the defining characteristics of all Latinx people.
Ms. Wood has produced one of the best debut novels of the past decade. We should all hope that she has a couple of more books ready to share with us.
A native of Tucson, Arizona, Silviana Wood is known for her bilingual comedies and dramas as well as for being a storyteller, actor, director, and teacher. She has twice won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California, Irvine and her 2016, Barrio Dreams/ Selected Plays was published by the University of Arizona Press.
La Quinta Soledad is a publication by Aztlan Libre Press.
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