cover image Growing Up Chicana/O: An Anthology

Growing Up Chicana/O: An Anthology

Tiffany Ana Lopez. William Morrow & Company, $20 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-688-11467-1

By turns lyrical, expansive, introspective and raw, these 20 stories of growing up Mexican-American reaffirm the potency of Chicano literature. In tales by Gary Soto, Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chavez, Alberto Alvaro Rios and others, youthful protagonists confront ethnic sterotypes, test the bonds of family, search for identity and cope with love, death, rites of passage and divorcing parents. These stories are at once universal and rooted in a specific culture. Notable are Sandra Cisneros's account of growing up poor in Chicago (``Eleven''), Gerald Haslam's tale of an English-speaking boy's loyalty to his Spanish-speaking great-grandmother (``The Horned Toad''), Louie The Foot Gonzalez's profile of a shamanistic wise woman/herbal healer in Sacramento's barrio (``Dona Tona of Nineteenth Street'') and Alicia Gaspar de Alba's recreation of the childhood of 17th-century nun and protofeminist poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. (Nov.)