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Book Cover for: The Flowers, Dagoberto Gilb

The Flowers

Dagoberto Gilb

Sonny Bravo is a tender, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who is living with his vivacious mother in a large city where intense prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown. When Sonny's mother, Silvia, suddenly marries an Okie building contractor named Cloyd Longpre, they are uprooted to a small apartment building, Los Flores. As Sonny sweeps its sidewalks, he meets his neighbors and becomes ensnared in their lives: Cindy, an eighteen-year-old druggie who is married and bored; Nica, a cloistered Mexican girl who cares for her infant brother but who is never allowed to leave their unit. The other tenants range from Pink, an albino black man who sells old cars in front of the building, to Bud, a muscled-up construction worker who hates blacks and Mexicans, even while he's married to a Mexican-American woman. Dagoberto Gilb, in arguably his most powerful work yet, has written an inspiring novel about hate, pain, anger, and love that transcends age, race, and time. Gilb's novel displays the fearlessness and wit that have helped make him one of this country's most authentic and original voices.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Grove Press
  • Publish Date: Feb 3rd, 2009
  • Pages: 256
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.40in - 0.80in - 0.55lb
  • EAN: 9780802144027
  • Categories: Literary

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Book Cover for: The Magic of Blood, Dagoberto Gilb
Book Cover for: Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories, Dagoberto Gilb
Book Cover for: The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, Dagoberto Gilb
Book Cover for: Woodcuts of Women: Stories, Dagoberto Gilb
Book Cover for: Gritos: Essays, Dagoberto Gilb

Praise for this book

"Dagoberto Gilb is one of the most powerful writers of his generation, and The Flowers is perhaps his best book. It's not to be missed."
"Gilb is a legitimate and undeniable talent. Not just in 'Chicano literature, ' not just in a certain part of the country or in select college syllabi, but in the vast black sea of American ink."
"Gritos is an intimate look at Gilb's growth as a writer grappling with a desire to stay true to his working-class roots, and at the same time expose the powerful talent he has for penetrating, honest, and emotional writing about cultural misconceptions, family relationships, manual labor, and American literature."
"Dagoberto Gilb is an important voice in American fiction. These stories of working-class, low-rent lives illuminated by the small pleasures of sex and drink and food and sleep and relief from the heat, stories of people with explosive tempers stumbling back and forth over cultural borders, of pregnancies and evictions and sudden love . . . are like no others. We need these stories."