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How To Leave Hialeah (2009)

by Jennine Capo Crucet(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1587298163 (ISBN13: 9781587298165)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

University Of Iowa Press

review 1: Capo Crucet's writing is rooted deep in a specific ecology and community. These are character-driven stories, not plot-driven, but all the same the body count is high. Almost all of the pieces in here are about death. Those that aren't are about bodies that decay or fail.I tried typing down my favorite stories, but found that the list was getting too long and all-inclusive. If you want to read about a radio intern enlisting nuns and santeras in the quest to resurrect Celia Cruz, or what happens to a dead man's ferret, or Miami-Cuban funerals and Christmas Eves and multiple sclerosis and tai chi -- and you don't mind an unconventional narrative arc that often leaves you without a concluding dun-dum-DUUUUM -- then find this book. At the very least, read the title essay, "Ho... morew to Leave Hialeah," which is remarkable.I disliked the few stories about young, heterosexual couples -- but I'm not certain they were written to be liked.
review 2: Junot Diaz’s Drown. Sandra Cisnero’s House on Mango Street. Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo. These are just some reference points for Jenine Capo-Crucet’s marvelous short story collection, How To Leave Hialeah. Set in the vastly Cuban working class neighborhood of Hialeah, a city in northwest Miami, these stories are tragic and tender, violent and hilarious. A young woman seeks to resurrect a legendary salsa singer to help cement an internship. A gang of kids find a dead body and wind up having to protect it from themselves. And, in what might be the funniest of these stories, a son runs over his own father, and that’s not even the worst of it. To say these stories are firmly rooted in the Cuban-American experience is to describe the heart of this collection. To say these stories address nothing less than the great themes of literature—love and loss, family and country—is to describe its spirit. less

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