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Reviewed by:
  • Dark Dude
  • Elizabeth Bush
Hijuelos, Oscar; Dark Dude. Atheneum, 2008; [448p] ISBN 978-1-4169-4804-9 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7–10

Fifteen-year-old Rico, light-skinned son of Cuban immigrants, wants to get away from his low-end neighborhood, his nagging mother, his heavy-drinking father, and his everyday struggle to prove he’s Latino when his faltering Spanish and blond hair seem to testify otherwise. He gets his chance when an older friend, Gilberto, wins the lottery and buys a farm in Wisconsin. Rico rounds up his abused, drug-addicted buddy Jimmy, and they make their way from New York to Gilberto’s doorstep; they’re introduced to the renters and squatters that enjoy Gilberto’s casual hospitality, and they are promptly put to work mucking out the outhouse, painting the siding, and generally trading labor for room and board. There’s no crime, no hassle, no school, a part-time job, plenty of congenial company, beer, and weed, and even a Midwestern girlfriend. Rico feels he’s landed in heaven. Over the ensuing months, though, Rico realizes that street violence and family dysfunction also make their home in the Midwest, that crashing with Gilberto hasn’t broadened his opportunities, and that he’s just as Cuban as he always was. Hijuelos relies on two massive improbabilities—Gilberto’s lottery win and the ease with which a Harlem teen becomes a Wisconsin farmer—to set the action in play, and his spit-shined portrayal of Midwestern life is overdrawn for the sake of Rico’s eventual epiphany. Moreover, the 1970s setting, which certainly does not negate Rico’s legitimate identity issues, nonetheless puts an unnecessary generation of distance between the protagonist and contemporary teens. Still, the boys’ road trip, Jimmy’s redemption, and Rico’s harsh but inevitable reality check should keep readers around to see him safely onto the return bus to Harlem.

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