The Importance of a Piece of Paper

Book Description

New York Grove Press 2004 Paperback First edition NEW 225pp. Octavo [21cm] Paperback. NEW. From the publisher: "Confirming his status as a writer of remarkable versatility and wisdom, award-winning poet and memoirist Jimmy Santiago Baca “continues to mine his experience, exploring conflicts between the rich traditions of Chicano culture and a modern world impatient with them” (Entertainment Weekly) in his widely praised debut collection of short fiction.In the title story, two siblings must face the brother who has betrayed them by selling his share of the family land and forsaking a centuries-old land grant, leaving an entire community vulnerable. In “The Three Sons of Julia,” a long-suffering mother, whose one request is that all her sons come home to the barrio for the Fourth of July, watches her dream shatter as two of her sons—one a successful businessman with a white wife and the other a hard-drinking ex-con—nearly destroy her house, and each other, by the night’s end. In “Runaway,” a young orphan discovers the consolations of fraternity when he is forced to care for a boy whose circumstances are even more dire than his own.

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