ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 1998)

As in her 1995 book An Island like You: Stories of the Barrio Cofer offers a set of interconnected works about Puerto Rican Americans coming of age. However, this second collection is much more sophisticated and lyrical. The stories highlight tensions between Puerto Rican immigrant parents and their American-born children, with exquisite detailing of the particular trends and difficulties that characterized the late 1960s. The book also includes poetry and fable, the latter lending a firm base to the traditional culture that is so well portrayed in the other stories. The remarkable poems highlight the conflicts, principles, and themes of the collection. This will be an invaluable resource for ethnic studies classes; it will also be a wonderful reading experience for literate teens able to savor the author's use of language. (Reviewed July 1998)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Returning to the territory covered in An Island Like You and Silent Dancing, Cofer further heightens her descriptions of barrio life with a pervasive current of sensuality and rebellion in this volume of poems and stories about growing up during the turbulent 1960s. Most of the stories are described in hindsight by narrator Mary Ellen, who is also known as Maria Elenita (however, readers may have trouble keeping track of the various narrators in the early stories--which are all told through first-person narration but from differing ages and perspectives). Caught between Hispanic and American lifestyles, and eager to break free of traditional Hispanic values, Mary Ellen is strongly attracted to things that are alien to her parents. Readers will likely relate to Mary Ellen's struggle for independence, her idealism and her need for answers, themes that Cofer carries through the entire collection. In """"The Meaning of El Amor,"""" for example, the narrator sneaks into a nightclub where her recently deceased father, """"the Puerto Rican Romeo,"""" moonlighted to find out why love causes so much suffering. Cofer's lyrical descriptions of how music and the Vietnam War fired Mary Ellen's youthful passions are affecting: """"When she was deep into a song, Janis [Joplin] became beautiful. Her voice, hoarse and choked with pain, went right through my skin, and I began to understand the meaning of soul, el duende, in American music."""" Readers in the suggested age range may miss the most rewarding aspects of Cofer's work, but for mature teenagers, there is wisdom aplenty in this radiant collection. Ages 11-up. (Aug.)

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1999)

Published spring 1998. Composed of stories, poems, and reminiscences, this eloquent volume chiefly focuses on Puerto Rican girls growing up in a New Jersey barrio. As the teenagers become immersed in the counterculture movement of the 1960s, their traditional parents struggle to understand the changes of the modern world. The writing style is excellent, although its adult tone, sometimes tinged with nostalgia, limits the book's audience.