Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz

The Hollywood where Sammy Santos and Juliana Rios live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and this friends--members of the 1969 high school graduating class--face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam and barrio violence. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguises a world of hurt. By summer's end, Juliana is dead. Sammy grieves, and in his grief, the memory of Juliana becomes his guide through this difficult year. Sammy is a smart kid, but he's angry. He's angry about Juliana's death, he's angry about the poverty his father and his sister must endure, he's angry at his high school and its thinly disguised gringo racism, and he's angry he might not be able to go to college. Benjamin Alire Saenz, evoking the bittersweet ambience found in such novels as McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, captures the essence of what it meant to grow up Chicano in small-town America in the late 1960s.

Benjamin Alire Saenz--novelist, poet, essayist and writer of children's books--is at the forefront of the emerging Latino literatures. He has received both the Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Fellowship, and is a recipient of the American Book Award. Born Mexican-American Catholic in the rural community of Picacho, New Mexico, he now teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso, and considers himself a fronterizo, a person of the border.

Saenz, Benjamin Alire: - A former Catholic priest who worked with Mother Teresa, Benjamin Alire Saenz has published five books of poetry, four novels, a collection of short stories, and two bilingual children's books. He received the American Book Award and teaches in the bilingual MFA program at University of Texas, El Paso.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780938317814
ISBN 10	0938317814
Title	Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
Author	Benjamin Alire Saenz
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cinco Puntos Press,U.S.
Year published	2004-08-19
Number of pages	240
Prizes	Winner of Americas Award for Children & Young Adult Literature (Fiction) 2004, Commended for L.A. Times Book Prize (Young Adult Fiction) 2004, Commended for Tayshas Reading 2005, Short-listed for Volunteer State Book Awards (Young Adult) 2006
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.