Saturday, December 10, 2011

Dagoberto Gilb's 6 favorite books

Dagoberto Gilb's books include The Flowers, Gritos, Woodcuts of Women, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, The Magic of Blood, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the newly released story collection Before the End, After the Beginning. Gilb is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award.

One of his six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:
Brides and Sinners in El Chuco by Christine Granados

It is only since the mid-'70s that literature by Chicanos has even been a speck on a distant horizon in our country. Even less than a speck has been Chicana fiction. Granados represents the beginning of a new direction in fiction. In this 2006 collection, the characters she inhabits are both powerfully strong and messed up — just as poor and working-class people really are.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue