Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez

A week ago, I finished Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez for the second time in five years. The book is an epic story spanning three generations of women from two families, one rich and the other poor. It is more than just the story of these two families, it is the story of the brutal massacre of indigenous people, the story of the conflict and bloody history of El Salvador, the battles of rich and poor, of tradition , against so called progress.

The women in this story are strong, determined, vibrant survivors. There is love here between mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. There is betrayal and anguish, the loss of children, loss of life, loss of a way of life. Ms. Benitez speaks eloquently of El Salvador’s beauty and the brutality against the indigenous. I ached when I read of the massacre. I cried bitter tears when the melodic language of the Pipil was silenced and when I read that they had given up their beautiful rainbows of color in their indigenous dress so as not to attract the attention and brutality of the Guardia.

At times, this book was so brutal in it’s truth; the violence and death were so senseless that I had to put it down for a day or two just to get past it. I wanted to hate the rich family that made their money on the backs of indigenous workers picking their coffee, working their fields but Ms. Benitez made them so human, so likeable that it was hard to find a villain. I sympathized and agonized with both. I wanted to stop things, make them see the inevitable disaster and got so involved with the story that I felt I was there. To be so involved in a book is a blessing no matter how hard the subject matter. Sandra Benitez is such a wonderful storyteller that for the days I read this book and long after, it absorbed me and changed me. It made me think. It made me want more. It made me educate myself more about El Salvador and its history.

How many books can do that? How many books can you retain so much of for such a long time? The second reading was just as hard to digest. Brutality, violence, terror, war and injustice aren’t meant to be easy. It is, after all these years just as hauntingly beautiful as when I first read it. Maybe more so now than before. I remain torn between the families, torn by the violence and injustice, want to work harder than ever for social change, for promoting peace and tolerance, more motivated than ever to protect my culture, my native language, the costumes my family wears for our Aztec dances, our traditions. I don’t know what else I can say about this book other than to encourage everyone to read it. It’s not some new buzz book – the publication date on my old copy is 1998 but look it up, buy it, borrow it, read it. Don’t leave it in the darkness of some old library shelf. It deserves much better.

Music of the Mill by Luis J. Rodriguez

Pulitzer prize winning John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 about the Joad family - their poverty, their desperation and above all their dignity. It was and is an amazing social commentary and Luis Rodriguez’s Music of the Mill is as well. Everyone knows about the Great Depression but how many people outside of the little South L.A. towns where the steel mill ruled for so many years and about the economical and social decline the closing of those mills caused? Billy Joel sang about Allentown and the whole nation was made aware of the loss of mills in Pennsylvania. Who sang for Huntington Park, Maywood, and South Gate, those little sad towns in Los Angeles? Luis J. Rodriguez has now done so.


In Music of the Mill, Luis Rodriguez writes about the Salcido family and their 60-year relationship to the mill called Nazareth Steel. The story starts with Propocio and Eladia walking most of the way from their home in Mexico to a new life in the United States. They wind up in Los Angeles and Procopio gets a job in the big steel mill. Rodriguez’s portrays the union battles, tesions between Blacks and Mexicans, the white domination in the union, in the mill itself and the fight of the Salcido family for equality and safety within the dangerous mill.

Johnny Salcido, the main protagonist is as strong of a character as any I’ve read. He has his dark side yet he is strong in his love for his wife and family. His portrayal - the young vato loco getting in trouble to the young, green mill worker to the activist and father all are so amazingly well done that you just feel like you know him and maybe you do. There is a lot of Johnny Salcido all of us, the rebel, the fighter, the lover of hearth, home, family.

The mill itself is portrayed as dangerous, toxic yet seductive monster. Mr. Rodriguez brings the reader into the mill; you feel its heat, its intensity, its ugliness and its beauty. From workers grilling their carne asada on an ingot to the racial tensions and divisions, you are in that mill. You can feel the tension, smell the carne. People die in the mill, lose limbs, breath in bad fumes. Workers turn to alcohol, drugs to stay awake in order to work more shifts. It is all too real.

I grew up a Xicana in the shadow of Bethlehem Steel in the 1970s. I remember the men that would come home dirty, black from the fire of the mill and tired. I remember when the mill closed and the rise in drug use; sales of such and violence began to escalate in the barrios where I was now raising my children. I never really tied the two instances together until I read this most remarkable novel.

It is as much a social commentary and as well written and gripping as Steinbeck’s. I read one review where the book was well received but the reviewer had a problem with Mr. Rodriguez’s socialist bent. I didn’t see that all. I found the book to be most realistic, the characters were people you cared about, wanted to find out more about. He is a master storyteller and one of the best social commentators of the Xicano in L.A.

No one understands the gangs, the drugs, the jail culture, the strong Xicana men and women, the love we have for our children and culture, the strong worth ethic of the modern and past day Mexican-American as much as Luis J. Rodriguez. He is our Steinbeck. The Music of the Mill hammers out its own glorious song and will be one day a force to be reckoned with. This is more than just a novel. This book has a destiny.

Thirteen Senses by Victor Villasenor

When I first heard that Victor Villasenor had written Thirteen Senses, I was excited. I adored Rain of Gold so much, that I expected even greater things of his new book. I trekked down to Olvera Street from nearby Echo Park to attend his signing and discussion there. I wasn’t disappointed. Mr. Villasenor spoke eloquently, vibrantly about his life, about his dyslexia and most of all his love of family. My son Phillip and I had a wonderful time after the discussion, speaking with Victor and his wife about the book and about life in general. We had to buy two copies of Thirteen Senses because we were both fighting over who would read it first. Two hours after the event saw my 18-year-old son and myself both deeply engrossed on each end of the sofa books in hand. Neither of us spoke for a while but occasionally one of us would laugh out loud and the other would look over the pages with smiling, happy eyes. We both finished the book late that night or rather early the next morning and we both had the same conclusion – we LOVED it.

The story starts at the 50th wedding anniversary and wedding vow renewal of Lupe and Juan Salvador Villasenor. When the young priest performing the ceremony asks Lupe if she will obey her husband, she shouts out no to the shock of her family and friends. She goes on to say that she will love and cherish him but obey? How dare the priest ask such a question? After the ceremony, her children ask her if she really loved Juan Salvador and the ensuing chapters go on to describe their first years of marriage.

The book is filled with the family’s mystical connection to spirits, God, angels and each other. There is pain, betrayal, love, laughter, wonder and joy throughout the lives of this couple and their children. One reviewer states that the mysticism is too much even for California, but the reviewer obviously isn’t Mexican. I grew up with this and found the book very real, very Mexicano and very human. I think I will always love Rain of Gold more than Thirteen Senses but that is not to say that one is better than the other. The truth is that they are both equally excellent, it’s just that for me Rain of Gold is more about the romance, the finding of that other, that other half of yourself, your soul mate and that sense of wonder and of floating on a cloud. Thirteen Senses is about a different kind of romance, one based on daily life, everyday things like changing diapers, making the beds, sex, grown up love, paying the bills and building a life together and the work it entails. There is fighting and making up, hurt feelings and anger, love and sex. In Rain of Gold we are taken back to our first love, young love and in Thirteen Senses we grow up.

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

This beautiful novel by Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall On Your Knees) is darkly sumptuous and astonishingly beautiful. It follows the McCarthy family on their journey back home to a military base in Canada. While the subject matter is dark, a child is murdered and may be hard reading for most (it was hard for me), the beauty of the language is so rich, so lyrical that it just begs to be read, to be finished.

The book takes place in 1963 Canada and the narrator, nine year old Madeleine tells a both beautiful and horrible story of her family’s joyful trip back to the father’s old Air Force base. From the joy of that family ride with her parents, mother Mimi, father Jack and brother Jack in their station wagon the book becomes increasingly gruesome. There are secrets and lies as Jack works covertly for the government. Madeliene has her own secrets and lies. The hard topic of child molestation and child murder are brought all to glaringly to life.

There are such beautiful passages here, such delectable language.

“Outside the car windows the corn catches the sun, leafy stalks gleam in three greens.”

“Fronds spiraling, cupping upward, swaddling the tender ears, the gift-wrapped bounty.”

“If you move around all your life, you can’t find where you come from on a map. All those places where you lived before are just that: places. You don’t come from any of them; you come from a series of events. And those are mapped in memory. Contingent, precarious events, without the counterpane of place to muffle the knowledge of how unlikely we are. Almost not born at every turn. Without a place, events slow-tumbling through time become your roots. Stories shadowing into one another. You come from a plane crash. From a war that brought your parents together.”

Yes, there are many beautiful passages, so many that I could spend the day just copying them into my report on the book. For the language alone, I loved the book. The darker stuff, well, it was hard to read. It was absorbing, difficult and so well written that I, a mother who shies away from books dealing with anything that involves the hurt of a child, was transfixed and couldn’t put it down. I was drawn into the McCarthy family, indulgently smiled at the perfect couple, secure in their love for each other, gasped in shock at the awful things that happened, wanted to scream at Madeline to say something, anything, was dismayed at the distance that grew between Jack and Mimi, was saddened by the death of a child and the repercussions that followed.

The book is a mystery, complex and evolving. It’s an incredible story and one filled with interconnected plots. I had never read this author before, but I’ll be watching for her next and going back to grab anything previous.

The Pearl Diver by Sujata Massey

I found this book to be stylish, well written, poignant and beautiful. Sujata Massey is a master of storytelling. She weaves such a beautiful mystery with astounding, life like characters that you feel for and want to know. Her prose is simple, to the point and absolutely gorgeous. I could not put this book down. It was intricate and I loved the ending. Rei Shimura and Hugh are characters I want to see much more of. Aunt Norie has to come back as well. She is wonderful!

The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell by Joe Loya

Joe Loya is an ex-convict, ex-bank robber turned writer whose correspondence with essayist Richard Rodriguez provides him with an anchor while he is imprisoned.

His story is appalling, violent and absolutely riveting. At times, I had to put it down because some of the things that happened to him or that he did were just so disturbing. Mr. Loya writes so well, however that I kept picking this book back up again to find out what happened.

It's an amazing look into the psyche of this precocious little boy who, through the abuse he suffers from his father slowly evolves into this manipulative criminal. This book shows us so clearly how violence and abuse affect society as a whole. The boy’s father is dealing with his own pain and demons, the loss of his wife.

Mr. Loya’s transition from bible verse spouting boy to manipulative, lying young man, to bank robber, to prisoner and finally, to writer is a journey into a life we rarely, if ever see or want to see. It is a beautifully written and detailed account of his life.