| Summary: |
The first Latino novelist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013) wrote rich and radiant novels that brought the Cuban American immigrant experience into the heart of American literature. "I marveled," recalls Juan Felipe Herrera, at "how meticulous he was and how deep he got into the lives of Latino and Cuban Americans in the United States." Hijuelos launched his career with Our House in the Last World (1983), a masterful recreation of the psychological pressures of migration. At its center is the young Hector Santinio, whose family has left the "home province of Fidel Castro, Batista, and Desi Arnaz" to settle in New York City, buoyed by hopeful expectations of America but drawn back by the nostalgic pull of Cuba, transformed in memory into a paradise it never was. As Hector and his brother Horacio toggle between worlds old and new, they achieve a hard-won sense of who they are and what they might become. In his best-known novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), a book that Gabriel Garc©Ưa M©Łrquez said he wished he had written" Hijuelos offers an unforgettable tribute to Latin music and its place in American culture. Bandleader Cesar Castillo, at a distance of several decades, recalls the passionate life and worldly pleasures he enjoyed as his band catapulted to momentary stardom, culminating in his appearance, with his brother, Nestor, on the I Love Lucy show. Pulsing with a rhythm and cadence uniquely its own, The Mambo Kings is a beguiling meditation on the fleeting nature of fame and celebrity as well as more profound themes of love, desire, and family. Successful in business, blessed with a happy family, the hero of Mr. Ives' Christmas (1995) appears to have achieved the American dream until his life is shattered by the murder of his seventeen-year-old son. |
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