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Oscar Hijuelos’s best-known novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, won a Pulitzer Prize, and its author has also been a National Book Award nominee and won some other fancy fellowships and grants. So it’s a good thing for his reputation, and his readers, that his first novel for young adults delivers.
Set in the 1960s, Dark Dude is told from the perspective of Rico Fuentes, a Cuban-American kid who looks different from everyone around him. As he puts it, “My Moms was a brunette with skin somewhere between cinnamon and café con leche. Ditto for my chubby little sister, Isabel. And my Pops had wavy dark hair and dark eyes. Then there was me. Hazel eyes, fair skin, and freckles, for God’s sakes! The odd one out. Even my cousins used to call me ‘blanquito’ and ‘Pinky.’” Rico’s family is hard on him, looking at him as if he “was some rich white kid, slumming it up with the spics in our apartment,” but they’re nice compared to the kids at “Jo Mamma,” his Harlem high school. Things there are so bad that Rico stops going, preferring to read comic books and come up with concepts for strips of his own with his struggling junkie friend Jimmy. When Rico’s parents find out he’s been ditching school and threaten to send him to a military academy, he runs away to a hippie commune in Wisconsin, where he discovers that even in the “enchanted land of butter and milk and corn…all pretty and peaceful, and not even a discarded syringe anywhere in sight,” you can’t get away from human nature or your own true self.
Like Rico, Dark Dude is low key and laid back—an easy read despite its occasional violence, with a good sense of time and place and a lot of laughs—but hides surprising depths. Rico will never feel fully Latino or fully white, but like all of us, he can learn to be himself.
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Sarah!♥ |
November 19, 2008I wouldn't say it was horrible or great. Just okay. |
Orgasmic AhDumb |
November 04, 2008Grimm Reaperthats a very sensitive subject for me. A girl I had strong feelings for just cheated on me with her cousin a bit less than a week ago. |
The Grimm Ripper (PWNING and pa-TROLL-ing) |
November 02, 2008haha redneckzi guess its the inter breeding that makes them dumb hahaha |
The ORIGINAL Cup of Joe |
November 01, 2008hahahasilly country fag wannabe your opinions no longer matter HANG YOURSELF! |
Orgasmic AhDumb |
October 31, 2008YepI'm gonna lose sleep tonight over my comments not impressing some wannabe cowboy. |
"The Instant Classic" Big Dick Dastardly |
October 30, 2008I met a few dark dudes today....in the bottom of my toilet! Girls FYI: Cowboys take it in the ass according to Brokeback Mountain. |
Girls FYI: Cowboys Make Better Lovers |
October 30, 2008Cannot Criticize a Book...I cannot criticize a book I have not read. It just appears to be somewhat easy to foreshadow. It seems like it is disguising the "Chicano" issue in a different concept. "They" are not wanted in the United States and they are "not welcomed" in Mexico because they are "pochos." They are not from here nor there. The majority of comments or "intellectual critics" are dull and insipid. None (comments criticizing the book) impressed me. |
The Grimm Ripper (PWNING and pa-TROLL-ing) |
October 20, 2008dudeyou have some serious anger problems |
The ORIGINAL Cup of Joe |
October 15, 2008this booksucks and before any asshole comes on here and accuses me of NOT reading it shut your head-hole. i read different parts of it while i was at borders, and if you go well "thats not reading it", I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN CHOP OFF YOUR GENETALIA AND FEED IT TO A RABID ORANGUTAN |
The Grimm Ripper (PWNING and pa-TROLL-ing) |
October 08, 2008i for oneprefer toilet paper over these books itsmuch easiertoreadand it doesnt hurt when i wipe my ass LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL |
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