Lorraine M. López made her notable debut in 2002 with the story collection "Soy La Avon Lady." Two novels later, she returns to her strength as a master tragicomic storyteller with "Homicide Survivors Picnic" (BkMk Press, $16.95), a book that explores the Latino family's intercultural and interracial experiences in the American South.
Only two of the 10 stories are connected, and two take place in California, but most of the characters are familiar with the same territory -- Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Since the American South is still learning to reconcile with its newest and fastest-growing ethnic population, Latinos have little choice but to depend on each other. Such alliances are not without problems -- and with situations like Lydia's in the stories "The Flood" and "The Landscape."
Lydia is a professor and childless, which makes it easy for her cousin Shirley, an unfit mother, to all but abandon her daughter, who is half black, into Lydia's care. So it's Lydia who must endure "the looks she got from strangers puzzled by her relationship with the biracial child."
A troubled motherhood also awaits Tina, the young pregnant woman in the title story whose black lover has been murdered. To ease her mourning, her quirky and inappropriately funny mother has the bright idea to crash a support group that meets in a nearby town. The third member of this party is Ted, who's feeling the culture shock of moving from California to Georgia. And because they have yet to know their way around, they end up "lost as a trio of lunatics who's wandered from the asylum to find themselves inexplicably rattling around in a used Toyota Corolla."
The stories "Sugar Boots," "The Threat of Peace" and "Women Speak" all deal with grown-ups negotiating roles as surrogate parents. But it's the third story, about a Latina speech instructor who's unable to verbalize her wishes to her own daughter, that's particularly devastating. READ FULL STORYRead more…
