Books

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La Quinta Soledad is a tour de force of Chicana literature, culture, cuisine, folklore and humor. Silviana Wood is a master storyteller and word-sorceress in love with the beauty, magic and creative possibility of the Chicana language in its glorious multilingualism and ability to navigate multiple realities.

The novel, part fiction /part memoir, is narrated by 62-year-old Quinta Soledad who lives in Tucson, Arizona. It tells a multigenerational Mexicana/Chicana family story that centers on her abuela, Nana Conchita, her mother, Lola, and her four sisters: Dalia (Dolly), Orquidea (Orky), Azucena (Susie Mae), and Magnolia (Maggie).

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“… One of the best debut novels of the past decade.”

Russ López, Editor/LatineLit

“Straight from the corazon, Silviana Wood has delivered a wondrous tale, a celebration of culture, language and familia. What a splendid achievement! This is a story to be savored, page by precious page.”

Demetria Martinez, author of Mother Tongue and The Block Captain’s Daughter

“Highly recommended. La Quinta Soledad is the kind of vast chronicle that transports readers to everywhere they desire to go. It heartens me to see a book so well award of our past masters, yet so attuned to our literary future.”

Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter

"Silviana Wood is la mera mera. ¡Ay, mi CC (Comadre Cabrona)! Who else but you could get inside the mind-and heart- of a piojo? Who but you could explore the universe from the smallest to the grandiose with such inventive, creative, linguistically magical pyro-technics in English/Spanish/Spanglish? Your words are tasty and sizzle like fresh hot chicharrones and then cool us down from the relentless heat of the human heart like a delicious cimarrona from your beloved Barrio Anita. ¡Nadie como tú! No one has the ferocity and beauty of your Spirit and the Splendor of your Vision. ¡Órale, mi CC!”

Denise Chavez, author of Loving Pedro Infante and The King and Queen of Comezón

During the advent of Chicano teatro, dozens of groups sprang up across the country in Chicano/a communities. Since then, teatristas have been leading voices in the creation and production of plays touching minds and hearts that galvanize audiences to action.

Barrio Dreams is the first book to collect the work of one of Arizona’s foremost teatristas, playwright Silviana Wood. During her decades-long involvement in theater, Wood forged a reputation as a playwright, actor, director, and activist. Her works form a testimonio of Chicana life, steeped in art, politics, and the borderlands. Wood’s plays challenge, question, and incite women to consider their lot in life. She ruptures stereotypes and raises awareness of social issues via humor and with an emphasis on the use of the physical body on stage.

The play Una vez, en un barrio de sueños . . . offers a glimpse into familiar terrain—the barrio and its dwellers—in three actos. In Amor de hija, a fraught mother-daughter relationship in contemporary working-class Arizona is dealt an additional blow as the family faces Alzheimer’s disease. In the tragedy A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories, and in the trilingual (Spanish, English, and Yaqui) tragicomedy Yo, Casimiro Flores, characters love, live, die, travel through time and space, and visit the afterlife. And in Anhelos por Oaxaca, a grandfather travels back in time through flashbacks, as he and his grandson travel through homelands from Arizona to Oaxaca.

Part of Wood’s genius is the way she portrays life in what Gloria Anzaldúa called “el mundo zurdo,” that space inhabited by the people of color, the poor, the female, and the outsiders. It is a place for the atravesados, the odd, the different, those who do not fit the mainstream. The people who inhabit Wood’s plays are common folk—janitors, mothers, grandmothers, and teenagers—hardworking people who, in one way or another, have made their way in life and who embody life in the barrio.

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“[Wood’s] work follows the long, proud tradition of Chicano and Chicana playwrights who incorporate political commentary, social commentary on race relations, bilingual dialogue and ample use of Chicano slang.”

Arizona Daily Star

“[Wood] es considerada como una genio, pues su narrativa, que en primeras instancias parte de los eventos ordinarios, poco a poco va llegando a caminos inesperados, llenos de trasfondo, reflexión y sensibilidad.”

El Imparcial