A01=Diego Vazquez
Author_Diego Vazquez
Category=D
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780393333466
- Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 08 Feb 2008
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Growing Through the Ugly begins: "This is my first day of being dead but I want to return to my abuelita's house." Even though the protagonist, Buzzy Digit, a child-turned-soldier, is dead, his memory is still alive. In lyrical, colorful, and haunting prose, drawing on elements of magic realism, we are transported to the 1960s town of El Paso, Texas, where we relive Buzzy's memories of his life with his extended family on the border between Mexico and America. The border where people speak two languages.
Abandoned first by his father, then by his mother, and growing up in an erotically charged household filled with cousins, aunts, and uncles, Buzzy's world is defined by loss, loneliness, and sexual confusion. Eventually Buzzy falls in love with his destructive cousin Red, and finds that his only escape from the claustrophobia of home is what might make him a hero—or kill him: the war in Vietnam.
Diego Vazquez, Jr. teaches in the Compass Writers and Artists in the Schools and the Minnesota State Arts Board, Artists in Education programs. His work has been anthologized in Speaking in Tongues, A View from the Loft, Instant Coffee, and New Chicana/Chicano Writing. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
