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The Madonnas of Echo Park Paperback – 8 February 2011
by
Brando Skyhorse
(Author)
Brando Skyhorse (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Reminiscent of Sherman Alexie and Sandra Cisneros, acclaimed author Brando Skyhorse's "engaging storytelling" (Vanity Fair) brings the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles to life in this poignant and propulsive novel following several generations of Mexican immigrants through their shifting cultural and physical landscapes.The Madonnas of Echo Park is both a grand mural of a Los Angeles neighborhood and an intimate glimpse into the lives of the men and women who struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. Each chapter summons a different voice--poetic, fierce, comic. We meet Hector, a day laborer who trolls the streets for work and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; his ex-wife Felicia, who narrowly survives a shooting and lands a cleaning job in a Hollywood Hills house as desolate as its owner; and young Aurora, who journeys through her now gentrified childhood neighborhood to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican-Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." Reminiscent of Luis Alberto Urrea and Dinaw Mengestu, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a brilliant and genuinely fresh view of American life.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date8 February 2011
- Dimensions13.97 x 1.52 x 21.43 cm
- ISBN-109781439170847
- ISBN-13978-1439170847
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Product description
Review
Winnerof the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
About the Author
Brando Skyhorse's debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park, won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir, Take This Man, was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 and one of NBC News's 10 Best Latino Books of 2014. Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers' Workshop program at UC Irvine.
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Product details
- ASIN : 1439170843
- Publisher : Free Press; 1st edition (8 February 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781439170847
- ISBN-13 : 978-1439170847
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 1.52 x 21.43 cm
- Customer Reviews:
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Born and raised in Echo Park, California, Brando Skyhorse is a graduate of Stanford University and the MFA Writers’ Workshop program at UC Irvine.
His first book, The Madonnas of Echo Park, received the 2011 PEN/Hemingway award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His next book, Take This Man, is a memoir to be published in June 2014.
Find out more at brandoskyhorse.com
Customer reviews
4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
149 global ratings
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Top reviews from other countries

lily
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stay with it ....
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 September 2016Verified Purchase
Took a bit of getting into as there are different stories that eventually all tie in together . It is a quick insight into how the Mexican people were treated in LA, many if whom lived there before the Mexican /American war.
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Max
1.0 out of 5 stars
worst book I read this year
Reviewed in the United States on 27 October 2018Verified Purchase
This book is a waste of good paper. It is overrated, the characters are flat, it tries to be edgy but it comes across as forced, the writing style reeks of the MFA writers workshop. The writer seems to wrap up each chapter with a calamity; his characters get deported, commit suicide, are murdered, become homeless ad nauseum...and because the characters are poorly developed, you really don't care, so it is all an exercise in tedious banality. As a Mexican-American, this writer seems like he is trying to hard to sound "Chicano", it is like he is posing or something. Put it this way, if "Brando Skyhorse" turned out to be a pseudonym for a middle aged white lady from Peoria, I won't be surprised.
2 people found this helpful
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Larry Hoffer
4.0 out of 5 stars
A compelling collection of stories that moved and intrigued me...
Reviewed in the United States on 10 August 2012Verified Purchase
Echo Park, the Los Angeles neighborhood down the hill from Chavez Ravine, is the setting for Brando Skyhorse's interconnected story collection, The Madonnas of Echo Park. (I think Brando Skyhorse may be one of the coolest names I've ever heard for an author.)
The characters in Skyhorse's stories are Mexican-Americans of varying ages who are trying to fit in with or rebel against their culture and their neighborhood. Many of the characters are the types of people we pass by every day--cleaning women, bus drivers, day laborers, ex-convicts and teenagers--but Skyhorse brings each to life by wrapping us up in their stories. There's Felicia, who finds herself cleaning house for a family more damaged than she bargained for; Angie, who is reminiscing about her life-changing, fractious relationship with her teenage best friend; Efren, a bus driver who has always prided himself on his staunch devotion to rules and regulations, until one night; Hector, a migrant worker who is forced into covering up a murder; and many others.
Some of the stories in this collection truly moved me, some intrigued me and all but one compelled me to keep reading. Skyhorse created some complicated, multi-layered characters; even when they fall closer to stereotypes, I still found myself invested in what was happening to them. I never felt as if the way he connected the stories was too forced; at times, when I recognized the connections I was even a bit surprised (and even awed, once or twice). I look forward to seeing what comes next in his career, and I definitely recommend this book if you enjoy short stories.
The characters in Skyhorse's stories are Mexican-Americans of varying ages who are trying to fit in with or rebel against their culture and their neighborhood. Many of the characters are the types of people we pass by every day--cleaning women, bus drivers, day laborers, ex-convicts and teenagers--but Skyhorse brings each to life by wrapping us up in their stories. There's Felicia, who finds herself cleaning house for a family more damaged than she bargained for; Angie, who is reminiscing about her life-changing, fractious relationship with her teenage best friend; Efren, a bus driver who has always prided himself on his staunch devotion to rules and regulations, until one night; Hector, a migrant worker who is forced into covering up a murder; and many others.
Some of the stories in this collection truly moved me, some intrigued me and all but one compelled me to keep reading. Skyhorse created some complicated, multi-layered characters; even when they fall closer to stereotypes, I still found myself invested in what was happening to them. I never felt as if the way he connected the stories was too forced; at times, when I recognized the connections I was even a bit surprised (and even awed, once or twice). I look forward to seeing what comes next in his career, and I definitely recommend this book if you enjoy short stories.
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Patricia Loftfjeld
5.0 out of 5 stars
a lovely novel-in-stories about intersecting generations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans
Reviewed in the United States on 23 June 2011Verified Purchase
Picked up this book after it won the PEN/Hemingway Award, since I've liked other P/H award winners in the past, and I was not disappointed. Skyhorse is a lush, unapologetically humanistic writer, and the book reads like a cross between a love song to and a eulogy for a community knotted together by love, tragedy, struggle, racism, class conflict, dreams, and circumstance.
MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK is rather OLIVE KITTERIDGE meets UNACCUSTOMED EARTH in its attention to interconnected lives and a specific immigrant/American community. I've realized how much I like the new genre emerging in books like MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK, OLIVE KITTERIDGE, and LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN--novels that grow out of (thoroughly) linked independent characters, whose lives coalesce and create a miniature world in which the setting and local culture is almost a character itself. It allows all the rich possibilities of world-building a novel does, but more freedom and natural possibility for the plot. Like I felt with those other books, one story in MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK resonated with me especially, because of my personal experiences. I look forward to recommending the book to others and seeing which particular story resonates for them.
MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK is rather OLIVE KITTERIDGE meets UNACCUSTOMED EARTH in its attention to interconnected lives and a specific immigrant/American community. I've realized how much I like the new genre emerging in books like MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK, OLIVE KITTERIDGE, and LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN--novels that grow out of (thoroughly) linked independent characters, whose lives coalesce and create a miniature world in which the setting and local culture is almost a character itself. It allows all the rich possibilities of world-building a novel does, but more freedom and natural possibility for the plot. Like I felt with those other books, one story in MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK resonated with me especially, because of my personal experiences. I look forward to recommending the book to others and seeing which particular story resonates for them.

Steeler
3.0 out of 5 stars
Create a character map for the many characters
Reviewed in the United States on 14 May 2018Verified Purchase
I wish I had created a map of characters when I started this book. There are many characters and I assume they are all somehow connected and I probably missed the point of the story because I didn’t always remember the connections. Sometimes when a character was mentioned again later in the book I didn’t remember who they were or what their connection was to the current character/other characters. So, I suggest if you’re just starting, create some kind of map to depict characters’ parents, kids, lovers, friends... and maybe a blip about them so when you meet them again you won’t experience what I had.
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