The Madonnas of Echo Park
A Novel
The Madonnas of Echo Park is both a grand mural of a Los Angeles neighborhood and an intimate glimpse into the lives of the men and women who struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. Each chapter summons a different voice—poetic, fierce, comic. We meet Hector, a day laborer who trolls the streets for work and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; his ex-wife Felicia, who narrowly survives a shooting and lands a cleaning job in a Hollywood Hills house as desolate as its owner; and young Aurora, who journeys through her now gentrified childhood neighborhood to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican-Americans dream of, “the land that belongs to us again.”
Reminiscent of Luis Alberto Urrea and Dinaw Mengestu, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a brilliant and genuinely fresh view of American life.
Reminiscent of Luis Alberto Urrea and Dinaw Mengestu, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a brilliant and genuinely fresh view of American life.
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Buy from us:
- Free Press |
- 224 pages |
- ISBN 9781439170854 |
- June 2010
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Praise
Read an Excerpt
2
The Blossoms of Los Feliz
Spring is here and it makes my joints ache. All those jacaranda blossoms on the walk outside to sweep up. Jacaranda trees thrive in Los Angeles, like blondes and Mexicans. There’s no getting away from them, not even in my dreams. They’ve haunted me from childhood, when I believed a jacaranda tree would save me. Can you imagine such a thing, a tree saving a life? A silly girl thought so once.
I’d been sent to my grandmother’s home in Chavez Ravine by a mother whose face I didn’t remember and whose cruelty Abuelita wouldn’t let me forget. The...
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Book Reviews
Reading Group Guide
This reading group guide for The Madonnas of Echo Park includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Brando Skyhorse. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the lives of Mexican Americans in the shifting landscape of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood, highlighting the intersections and collisions of American and Mexican culture. Felicia, a housekeeper, and her daughter Aurora weave in and out of each others’ lives, struggling to find a common ground on which to relate. Aurora’s estranged father Hector finds himself a witness to a murder, and must choose between deportation and complicity. Aurora’s former classmates Duchess and Angie, steeped in American culture, drift apart as they choose different paths in life, each looking for a place to fit in. Felicia’s aging mother Beatriz, who gave Felicia up as a baby, is torn between guilt and nostalgia, and her own driving self-interest. As their lives tangle together and bounce apart, each is given the opportunity to decide what is truly important to them.
Questions for Discussion
1. The first chapter of see more
Introduction
The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the lives of Mexican Americans in the shifting landscape of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood, highlighting the intersections and collisions of American and Mexican culture. Felicia, a housekeeper, and her daughter Aurora weave in and out of each others’ lives, struggling to find a common ground on which to relate. Aurora’s estranged father Hector finds himself a witness to a murder, and must choose between deportation and complicity. Aurora’s former classmates Duchess and Angie, steeped in American culture, drift apart as they choose different paths in life, each looking for a place to fit in. Felicia’s aging mother Beatriz, who gave Felicia up as a baby, is torn between guilt and nostalgia, and her own driving self-interest. As their lives tangle together and bounce apart, each is given the opportunity to decide what is truly important to them.
Questions for Discussion
1. The first chapter of see more
Video
Brando Skyhorse delves into The Madonnas of Echo Park
A new voice in ethnic literature, Brando Skyhorse's story of a Mexican-American community is now in paperback.
Brando Skyhorse delves into The Madonnas of Echo Park
Brando Skyhorse Reveals His Favorite Movie
Brando Skyhorse Reveals His Favorite Song
Who are THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK? Brando Skyhorse knows....
