Bodega Dreams: A Novel
by Ernesto Quinonez

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Book Summary Information

• ISBN13: 9780375705892
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Bodega Dreams: A Novel

Book Review: First you Dream It
Summary: 5 Stars

The real fix, the real hit in reading is when you see your own experience of the world reflected, when you nod your head in agreement, laugh with recognition. A great book can be confirmation that you exist, that your world is important. Nothing is more crippling to the soul than erasure, and a great book about the world you recognize is the opposite of erasure.

That's why reading Bodega Dreams is POWERFUL. I'm an americana, but I work in a barrio, and all day long I listen to the voices and stories that come out of it. The voices are beautiful, sad, funny, interesting, alive and so damn VALUABLE. The lives of my clients, which make up the life of the barrio, are full of injustice, and and courage. My clients speak with a language (Spanglish or nuevorican) of their own. The barrio is a huge slice of the America I know, of the life that I live (at least vicariously). The disorientation I sometimes feel when I leave my particular barrio and enter the mainstream media world - a world which erases and denies the barrio and it's language - is unsettling. Sometimes it makes me very angry, as though someone had suddenly slapped the people I talk to all day and told them to shut up. As though they'd been gagged (or maybe I should say gagged again, because it often seems to me that their dealings with the mainstream are an endless series of gaggings, interruptions, and disrespect). Well, Ernesto Quinones's book rips the gag off.

One of the key characters in Bodega dreams is a former political activist, William Irizarry aka Willie Bodega. After the activism of the seventies failed, and after some personal betrayals, Willie Bodega became a junkie, and then got clean and became the East Harlem version of a mafia don. Except Bodega is a don with a difference. His dream is to spend dirty money renovating, building, educating - empowering, in fact - the people of the ghetto.

The protaginist, Julio, has to negotiate between his love for his evangelica wife, who needless to say, is a real straight arrow, and his loyalty to, and growing involvement with, Willie Bodega. There are also fascinating subplots, character sketches worthy of Dickens, and colored glimpses of puerto rican city life.

Trust me, on the most superficial level, Bodega Dreams is a fast ride and great reading, even if you haven't the slightest interest in Spanish Harlem or la cultura puerto riquena. But on other levels the book is revolutionary. This is a DANGEROUS book - as George Orwell's books and Charles Dicken's books were dangerous - because it speaks for and to people who have been silenced.

Ernesto Quinones, thank you. You are my hero, my Willie Bodega.

Summary of Bodega Dreams: A Novel

Blanca wasn't allowed to wear jeans but she made up for it by wearing tight, short skirts. She always carried a Bible with her and never talked bad about anybody and at school she only hung around with her Pentecostal friend, Lucy. Lucy was a hairy girl who never shaved her legs because it was against her religion. Blanca had hairy legs as well, but Lucy's legs were so hairy that everyone called her Chewbacca.... When the cruelty toward Lucy became too much for Blanca, she'd punish the boys by being the coldest, most serious person in school. Only Blanca could get away with this because she had an angelic face that almost made you want to sing Alleluia. Made you want to pick up a tambourine and join her one night in her church. Make a joyful noise to the Lord so she would begin to jump up and down to all that religious salsa. And maybe you'd be lucky enough to cop a cheap feel as the Holy Ghost took over her body.

Genre Fiction Books

• Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction
• United States > Hispanic