Painting their portraits in winter
Subtitle: short stories / Myriam Gurba
Publisher: Manic D Press, Inc.
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 158
ISBN-13: 9781933149905
Copyright date: 2015
Description: In this artfully crafted collection of new short stories by award-winning author Myriam Gurba, nothing is as it seems on the surface. A Mexican grandmother tells creepy yet fascinating ghost stories to her granddaughters as a way to make them sit still ("How Some Abuelitas Keep Their Chicana Granddaughters Still So That They Can Paint Their Portraits in Winter"). A Polish grandfather spends the night in a Mexican graveyard after a Día de Muertos celebration to discover if ghosts really do consume the food that has been left for them ("Even This Title Is a Ghost"). Unforgettable characters inhabit these cross-border tales filled with introspection and longing, as modern sensibilities weave and wind through traditional folktales creating a new kind of magical realism that offers insights into where we come from and where we may be going.
Table of contents: title: How some abuelitas keep their Chicana granddaughters still so that they can paint their portraits in winter --; title: Ice capades --; title: E=MaChismo² --; title: Georges Bataille, look into my eye --; title: Lambada --; title: Some orphans have parents --; title: The chaperones --; title: Spoiler alert: If you haven't read Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel but plan to, skip ahead --; title: Chaparral --; title: Chihuawhite --; title: Dog people --; title: Columbusted --; title: The time I rewrote the first two pages of The Bell Jar from a melodramatic Chicana perspective and named it The Taco Bell Jar --; title: Hummers --; title: Petra Páramo --; title: Tzintzuntzan --; title: Bird hair --; title: Even this title is a ghost --; title: Be hoof, behave, behoove (and be hooves): a four-legged triptych featuring pigs both chauvinist and piloncillo.