Gritos » (Reprint)

When he first started writing, Dagoberto Gilb was struggling to survive as a journeyman high-rise carpenter. Years later, he has won widespread acclaim as a crucial and compelling voice in contemporary American letters. Tackling everything from cockfighting to Cormac McCarthy, Gritos collects Gilb's essays and his popular commentaries for NPR's Fresh Air, offering a startling portrait of an artist-and a Mexican-American- working to find his place in both the cloistered literary world and the world at large, to say nothing of his strange and beloved borderland of Texas.

Library Journal

In the past few years, Gilb has established himself as one of the foremost writers on the dignity of work in the United States, and these collected pieces show the ongoing tension between the writer and the carpenter within him. These "gritos" (translated narrowly as "shouts" but with broader meanings depending on the context) could be described as autobiographical pieces in which the writer is not always the obvious subject. The topics range from forays into Mexico to follow the legend of Cort s and La Malinche, to the miscegenation that leads figuratively to the mixed race of Latinos, to Gilb's experiences in New England when he traveled there to receive a literary prize, to memories of his mother and the various men in her life. Unlike his short stories, these works rarely show Gilb settling into a tranquil routine. Instead, he finds himself writing about uncomfortable situations with predictable ironies. The results are always interesting, however, and some pieces resound with an intensity of style that keeps the pages turning. Latino essayists have only recently been allowed into the magazine and journal worlds, and Gilb, along with contemporaries Richard Rodriguez and Ilan Stavans, is becoming part of that significant group. Highly recommended.-Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.