Ghosts of El Grullo

Having left her much-loved San Diego barrio, Yolanda Sahag n is now living in the university dorms when a series of events--her mother dies and her father sells their home--forces her to re-examine her life. Yolanda visits her parents' hometown of El Grullo, Mexico, struggling to understand the ghosts in her life--her mother, her father, and her seemingly idyllic childhood. She fears losing herself in the disintegration of the family. For Yolanda, her father is her enemy (or so she thinks), and in the course of the novel we see him at his best and worst, and we see Yolanda at her best and worst.

This is a story of Yolanda's initiation into womanhood and about her fierce struggle to make sure her family does not dissolve. Family and sexual politics; love, death, and abandonment; the struggle to resolve a personal identity in the context of a shattered, first-generation immigrant American family--these are the hugely painful obstructions Yolanda must surmount or incorporate into her own being as she makes her life's journey.

Ghosts of El Grullo is a sequel to Santana's critically acclaimed and prize-winning Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility.

Author: Patricia Santana
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 03/01/2008
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.14h x 6.39w x 0.99d
ISBN: 9780826344090
Award: San Diego Book Awards - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 03/15/2008 pg. 27
Poder Hispanic 05/01/2008 pg. 71
Multicultural Review 09/01/2008 pg. 50
Library Journal 04/21/2008

About the Author
Santana, Patricia: - Patricia Santana is chair of the foreign languages department and professor of Spanish at Cuyamaca College, El Cajon, California. Her earlier book, Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (UNM Press), received the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Book for Young Adults.