America Is Her Name

In Rodriguez's ponderous, wordy story, a Mixteca Indian girl living in a Chicago barrio struggles to find her niche in a hostile society. The author eschews subtlety: the ironically named America witnesses a sidewalk shooting while walking to school; the intolerant teacher of her ESL class dismisses her students as ""difficult"" and whispers to a colleague that America is ""an illegal""; the girl's uncle is a drunk, her father gets laid off and someone calls her mother a wetback. The imagery is equally heavy-handed, as in America's description of the ""desperate men without jobs"": ""They all seem trapped, like flowers in a vase, full of song and color, yet stuck in a gray world where they can't find a way out."" America escapes this bleakness by creating poetry (""A poet, America knows, belongs everywhere""), but this flatly written tale doesn't serve its political agenda, nor does it transcend it. Vasquez's stylized art is also poorly targeted for the intended audience, who may be put off immediately to find that the young heroine looks considerably older than her nine years. La llaman America, a Spanish-language edition, will also be released. Ages 6-10. (Apr.)