Book description
Having left her much-loved San Diego barrio, Yolanda Sahagún 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.
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.
