Customer Reviews

Bodega Dreams

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Ernesto Quinonez' debut novel, Bodega Dreams, breaks through stereotypes, and enlightens the reader to the numerous human elements that make up El Barrio. Nevertheless, his purpose is not to explain the socio-economic group dynamic that makes up contempoary East Harlem. His purpose is to tell a good story. Unfortunately, I was expecting more of the former. As an Anglo who works in a Hispanic community, I thought the book would give me more insight into how Nuyoricans view themselves within New York's Latin American Community. For instance, the reality of inter-Hispanic relations is more complex than the author lets on. Although the subject is broached (inside the precinct house), Quinonez leaves it at it's barely scratched surface.

Although these expectations were not satisfied, my curiosity as a reader of a good novel was. Quinonez' hero, Chico, doesn't take a holier than thou attitude toward the seedier characters he meets, but accepts them for who they are: hoods, drug dealers, mafiosos, and the lowlife attorney, Navarro.

The descriptions of El Barrio are first rate. The reader gets an insider's view of Quinonez' home turf: the sights, sounds and smells that make up his neighborhood. What the author fails to do is explain why Chino's love, Blanca, a devout Pentecostal, falls in love with him and gets married at such a young age, despite his continued association with the local drug pusher, Sapo. Perhaps the courtship was edited out of the original manuscript. And although Chino seems to be a decent, inteligent fellow, how these two became married while full time college students is never satisfactorily answered. The plot was interesting, pitting the black and white concepts of right and wrong against the myriad grays that represent the realities of survival and prosperity in El Barrio. The characters of Chino and Sapo were well developed, but the lesser characters were one-sided. The social conscience of Willie Bodega, the Puerto Rican Social Activist turned drug dealer, was quite unbelievable. The dialogue was interesting, and often humorous, but oftentimes highly predictable. However, the climax was somewhat surprising, and did catch me off guard. All told, I found this to be excellent debut novel, and look forward to Quinonez' next book.

Bodega Dreams brought back alot of memories of growing up in Spanish Harlem (Carver Projects) during the 70's and 80's. Each time I read something that would trigger a memory, I would read the section to my husband (a wonderful "redneck") and tell him that's how it was while I was growing up. The men playing dominoes outside, the congos being played on the streets, the pumps opened on a hot summer night, the salsa coming from the apartment windows...all of it brings back memories. I moved away in 1984 and moved around the country. I now call a small quiet town in Ohio home, but my family is still there. My mother still lives in the same apartment that I grew up in. I don't go back often but the memories in the book were sweet. Ernesto has captured the feel and emotions of the spanish people in harlem. For all you latinos out there, read this book...you won't be disappointed.

Bodega Dreams is a shiny penny in the middle of nothingness. Vivid characters and fresh dialogue. Ernesto Quinonez has succeeded in accomplishing a novel that spills out sad and beautiful truths without worrying about who its spilled on. This book is reminiscent of authors such as Piri Thomas, Junot Diaz and Abraham Rodriguez Jr. but Mr. Quinonez is still able to carve his own niche into the land of Latino Literature.

Here is the novel Junot Diaz would have loved to have written. But I don't think Quinonez should be compared to anyone. He is a very authentic voice. This is a beautiful and heartbreaking book. The language is so fast you'd think you're on a subway going uptown, and so humorous, you're entertained throughout the voyage. I highly recommend this novel! (And cheap paperback too--so give them to your friends!)

I bought this book in a used bookstore on a lark.

Boy, was I happy I did when I finished it.

The book is written really well, with a confident tone that belies this is a debut novel. There's a tremendous amount of detail about Spanish Harlem and its people. I found this quite authentic and compelling and it made me want to read more by him.

The central character, Chino, is a latter day Oliver Twist falling under the spell of a far craftier Fagan-like character. I found the villain, Willie Bodega, to be a compelling character as well with real motivations and troubles. Deception follows deception and soon no one can stop the chain of events unleashed by passion, greed, and love.

The author teaches school in New York. He's well educated and well versed in literature. It's really quite a treat to see him take certain classic elements of a tale and lay them down in Spanish Harlem. At times I felt I was reading a modern day update of a Grecian tragedy. At other times I felt like I was reading a Spanish Oliver Twist.

At every point, I was enthralled. I recommend Ernesto Quinonez's Bodega Dreams highly.

I purchased this book in error, but it was a great mistake. I thought it was going to be about the Mexican immigrants who work at the Korean bodegas in Manhattan. Wow, was i wrong. Instead I found a lyrical novel with a social vision about Chino (Julio Mercado), who finds that you just can't do one favor for Willy Bodega, East Harlem's chief drug dealer and philanthropist. I live just a few blocks from the epicenter of the story, but it was a completely different world that the novel introduced to me. Just as Claude Brown created Harlem for readers of "Manchild", Quinonez, 34, a New York City 4th grade bilingual school teacher of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican ancestry, raised by a Communist father and Jehovah Witness mother, paints for the reader a portrait of El Barrio, a Spanish Harlem of apartment blocks, bodegas, botanicas, beans, holdups, murals, nicknames, rice, BMW's, and communions. Yes, you get drawn in with all the nicknames, like Chino, and Sapo, Blanca, Taino, Batuka, Bisocho, as well as Papito, Tato, and Junito, but you stay for the mystery of the story of the criminality of some of the characters. Will Chino become a front for the Harry Goldstein Real Estate Agency (which is actually a front for Bodega's empire)? Can you do a single favor and wipe your hands of the relationship? Can you escape Taino Towers? Is it true that while the Messiah tarries, and the goodpeople are only good for paying loans, that only the dishonest and paradoxical people can bring about change? Eso esta heavy duty!

As an avid reader I'm always on the quest for new books. After reading an excerpt of Bodega Dreams I was hooked. The language was great, it is a language I often speak myself, Spanglish. Growing up in a not so nice neighborhood in Long Island, NY I found the book comforting becuase it hit close to home. I loved the characters, especially Sapo. The story is one that goes on in all walks of life, deceit. I hope that Ernesto Quinonez finds the inspiration to write a second book to let his readers know if Blanca & Chino stay together. Until then I will spread the word of his first great novel and wait for a second.

I just finished one of the best and most important books I have read in years, Ernesto Quinones' Bodega Dreams. Bodega Dreams is an entire universe, vividly written. Quinones has a great ear for voices. The characters are more real, with their dialogues, than some of the people you spoke to today. This is one of those rare books that is funny, sad, inspiring, and alive, a book which rings in places like a bell, rings with the absolute, humming truth that makes a classic.

The real fix, the real hit in reading is when you see your own experience of the world reflected, when you nod your head in agreement, laugh with recognition. A great book can be confirmation that you exist, that your world is important. Nothing is more crippling to the soul than erasure, and a great book about the world you recognize is the opposite of erasure.

That's why reading Bodega Dreams is POWERFUL. I'm an americana, but I work in a barrio, and all day long I listen to the voices and stories that come out of it. The voices are beautiful, sad, funny, interesting, alive and so damn VALUABLE. The lives of my clients, which make up the life of the barrio, are full of injustice, and and courage. My clients speak with a language (Spanglish or nuevorican) of their own. The barrio is a huge slice of the America I know, of the life that I live (at least vicariously). The disorientation I sometimes feel when I leave my particular barrio and enter the mainstream media world - a world which erases and denies the barrio and it's language - is unsettling. Sometimes it makes me very angry, as though someone had suddenly slapped the people I talk to all day and told them to shut up. As though they'd been gagged (or maybe I should say gagged again, because it often seems to me that their dealings with the mainstream are an endless series of gaggings, interruptions, and disrespect). Well, Ernesto Quinones's book rips the gag off.

One of the key characters in Bodega dreams is a former political activist, William Irizarry aka Willie Bodega. After the activism of the seventies failed, and after some personal betrayals, Willie Bodega became a junkie, and then got clean and became the East Harlem version of a mafia don. Except Bodega is a don with a difference. His dream is to spend dirty money renovating, building, educating - empowering, in fact - the people of the ghetto.

The protaginist, Julio, has to negotiate between his love for his evangelica wife, who needless to say, is a real straight arrow, and his loyalty to, and growing involvement with, Willie Bodega. There are also fascinating subplots, character sketches worthy of Dickens, and colored glimpses of puerto rican city life.

Trust me, on the most superficial level, Bodega Dreams is a fast ride and great reading, even if you haven't the slightest interest in Spanish Harlem or la cultura puerto riquena. But on other levels the book is revolutionary. This is a DANGEROUS book - as George Orwell's books and Charles Dicken's books were dangerous - because it speaks for and to people who have been silenced.

Ernesto Quinones, thank you. You are my hero, my Willie Bodega.

Ernesto Quinonez's first novel, Bodega Dreams, is a modern update on the Great Gatsby formula, set in Spanish Harlem. Quinonez has an original and authentic writing voice-particularly when it comes to establishing setting, character and mood- but the dialog is often a step behind-a few too many clichés, language a little to refined for a ghetto setting. Nonetheless, his sense of timing is good, his characters are memorable and the story is deftly executed. This is an author who shows great promise. I'm looking forward to his sophomore effort.

I enjoyed the book very much as a fan of "The Great Gatsby." Quinonez is a great addition to our Latino literary culture along with Piri Thomas and Junot Diaz. However, I also recommend another Ecuadorian writer, Emanuel Xavier, probably overlooked because he is a gay writer. These are the proud voices of our culture which would make a great ceviche.