Bodega Dreams: A Novel by Ernesto Quinonez, Ernesto Quiinonez

From the Publisher

"A new and authentic voice of the urban Latino experience." --Esmeralda Santiago, author of When I Was Puerto Rican

In a stunning narrative combining the gritty rhythms of Junot Diaz with the noir  genius of Walter Mosley, Bodega Dreams announces the arrival of a writer who The Village Voice has already hailed as "a Writer on the Verge."

The word is out in Spanish Harlem: Willy Bodega is king.  Need college tuition for your daughter?  Start-up funds for your fruit stand?  Bodega can help.  He gives everyone a leg up, in exchange only for loyalty--and a steady income from the drugs he pushes.

Lyric, inspired, and darkly funny, this powerful debut novel brilliantly evokes the trial of Chino, a smart, promising young man to whom Bodega turns for a favor.  Chino is drawn to Bodega's street-smart idealism, but soon finds himself over his head, navigating an underworld of switchblade tempers, turncoat morality, and murder.

KLIATT

Although most of his friends succumb to the vices of street life in the ghetto, like William Bodega, Chino dreams of a better future. Therefore, Chino goes to college, while Bodega becomes the most successful slumlord in East Harlem. Their paths cross when Nazaro, Bodega's lawyer, needs Chino's help finding Bodega's lost love, the one he built his success to impress. Chino is so mesmerized by Bodega's dream of building a professional Latino class and a real estate empire that his vision gets clouded. Instead of remaining true to himself, he succumbs to Nazaro's schemes, only to end up his pawn. Chino discovers that although Bodega's crooked plan for political, social, and economic changes fails, the purity of his dream lives on. Quinonez captures more than just the loss of innocence in this novel, he captures the true flavor of the Latin world in Spanish Harlem. From ethnic food, colloquialisms and crude street-talk, to "Spanglish," evangelical religion, and salsa music, this story pulses with the rhythm of a Latin people dancing on Anglo soil. Furthermore, Quinonez's gripping story sparkles with metaphors so brilliant and tangible that the reader will be absorbed from beginning to end. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Random House/Vintage, 212p, 21cm, 99-33380, $12.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Claire M. Dignan; El Centro del Cardenal School, Boston, MA, September 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 5)

Library Journal

Chino, caught in a squeeze play between devotion to his pregnant Pentecostal wife and beholden to the barrio ringleader Bodega, evokes an inner-city scenario of mayhem and murder. Despite his drug-pushing wheeling-dealing, Bodega idealistically wants to improve the living conditions of Spanish Harlem; though his life is truncated, his dream doesn't die. Running throughout the novel is the motif of appearances: characters assume different identities, and the denouement twist catches the reader off guard. Qui onez writes with cinematographic detail of life in the ghetto and very graphically reproduces the rough language of the street. Despite its film noir approach, tinges of humor often offset the bleakness; one character, for example, interjects snippets of popular songs into his speech. Recommended primarily for urban libraries and those with sizable Puerto Rican constituents.--Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

YA-Willie Bodega, a man of middle years, heads a syndicate that organizes the economics, justice system, and politics in Spanish Harlem. He works toward his dream of creating a rising professional class of Puerto Rican citizens with the aid of a tiny cadre of powerful, ultimately traitorous, friends. Using the voice of a barely post-adolescent youth to tell the tale of Willie's undoing, Qui-onez gives readers pitch-perfect characterizations, crisp dialogue, and plenty of action. Chino is newly married to a pregnant Pentecostalist who holds herself above barrio politics. He and his wife attend night school, work, and struggle to pay the rent. Chino's wild boyhood friend introduces him to Bodega, in a roundabout way, and against all of his better instincts, Chino begins to work for Bodega, dreams with him, and, in the end, takes his place. Realism and romantic adventurism are neatly bonded here, making this a book for eager and reluctant readers alike. In a market that is short on Latino novels of literary merit, this one stands out and demands attention from readers from all cultural backgrounds.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

The New York Times Book Review - Maud Casey

No simple morality tale, Bodega Dreams is a stark evocation of life in the projects of El Barrio, the ''mammoth filing cabinets of human lives,'' from the keen perspective of someone who has one foot out the door yet who is homesick already...the story he tells has energy and nerve.

The Los Angeles Times - Mark Rozzo

In this remarkable debut, Ernesto Quinonez creates a portrait of Spanish Harlem that's as colorful and elegiac as the R.I.P.s that Chino, his straight-talking 20-something narrator, once painted for fallen neighbors as a teenage graffiti artist.

The Voice Literary Supplement - Ed Morales

Bodega is a snappy roman ā clef in which Chino, the narrator and Quinoņez's alter ego, grapples with the pervasive criminal code of the street and his own attempts to make a family...The most ingenious thing about La Bodega Sold Dreams is the way it codifies much of the East Harlem experience, with its Young Lords legends, Santeria rituals, and bilingual bards. Like Junot Diaz and Abraham Rodriguez, Quinoņez is helping to establish Spanglish as a new-millennium urban language.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents

 BOOK I    Because Men Who Built This Country Were Men from the Streets                    1    
 BOOK II   Because a Single Lawyer Can Steal More Money Than a Hundred Men With Guns      83    
 BOOK III  A New Language Being Born                                                     201