Between Dances [Paperback]

Erasmo Guerra (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

... a novel about looking for light in the shadows and holding onto hopes in the face of dispair. -- The Bloomsbury Review, January/February 2001

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Painted Leaf Pr; 1st edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891305239
• ISBN-13: 978-1891305238
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,763,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Erasmo Guerra is an award-winning writer and journalist. His personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, The Texas Observer and aired on NPR. His debut novel Between Dances received the Lambda Literary Award.

As a regular contributor to the New York Daily News, AARP magazine and other publications, Erasmo has written feature stories on subjects from actress America Ferrera to writer Julia Alvarez. He has received writing fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is a member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop.

Erasmo was born on the Texas-Mexico border and now lives in New York City. He loves strong coffee and hearing other people's crazy-family stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hearty applause, Erasmo Guerra!, March 24, 2001

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Between Dances (Paperback)

BETWEEN DANCES is terrific novel. The fact that it is a first novel is amazing. Erasmo Guerra will be assuming a high position in the ranks of young American novelists if he continues to write this well.

Many authors have attempted to give us the "Inside Story" about the lives and psyches of male hustlers and go-go dancers. Often those other efforts have just been broad outlines for titllating porn books. Not BETWEEN DANCES. Guerra has created characters who are so real that with a refreshing economy of words gives us an in depth background of who they have been and why they have come to the business of selling their bodies on the stage and in sleazy hotel rooms. Marco, Chris and Jaime are not whining down and outers - they recognize that they perform not only for money but for the attention and love they crave. For once the johns are not painted as deviates; we meet and get to know some regular people who also have their needs and choose to pay for them.

But there is much more to this atmospheric, often poetic work than this. Guerra gradually allows us to learn how young boys are driven to flee their homophobic backgrounds and take risks that may seem irresponsible to those on the outside in order to establish loving relationships socially unavailable to them as adolescent "pre-gay" males.

And as if this weren't sufficient for a first novel, Guerra reals a penchant for describing not only inner city life in New York, but paints beautifully poetic vistas of the four seasons. Rarely has a writer lingered over the beauty of autumn or lifted us to the passing sights of jogging in the city the way Guerra has. This is a very talented young man and I eagerly await watching his career develop. And again, Bravo!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guerra delivers!, June 29, 2000

By 

Barry Joseph "Barry J" (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Between Dances (Paperback)

Guerra does it again! This first novel by the editor of one of the top selling gay anthologies delivers. This slice of urban gay life located within a web of shifting relationships and largely unerotic sexual liasons paints a compelling portrait of an endearing young man's quest for true love and sense of self. The characters are interesting, the story well rendered, and the go-go background hideously compelling. I couldn't put it down.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Viva Times Square Sleaze!, June 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Between Dances (Paperback)

Erasmo Guerra has written a sensitive, multifaceted, yet still steamy, account of the life of a young gay Latin male who dances at a male porn theater in New York's Times Square. Most of these places have closed, and anyone wishing to read about New York pre-Giuliani should read this book. Guerra's writing is much more than tittilation. At the heart of the book is a love story that's complex with the familiar problems of two twentysomethings trying to overcome their individual ideas of "commitment" and love while at the same time trying to offer each other basic support and friendship. These characaters are kids transplanted from the provinces who walk on the New York's wild side as an act of initiation into real adulthood. Vignettes of male hustling are vivid, as are snatches of the young man's upbriging in a hispanic family on the Texas-Mexico border. But the true outsider here is the young man looking for real love.