Meet Me under the Ceiba [Paperback]

Silvio Sirias (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2009

''I'm not afraid of that old man,'' Adela once told her niece. But everyone in the small town of La Curva, Nicaragua, knew that the wealthy land owner, Don Roque Ramirez, wanted Adela Rugama dead. And on Christmas Day, Adela disappeared. It was two months before her murdered body was found.
An American professor of Nicaraguan descent spending the summer in his parents' homeland learns of Adela's murder and vows to unravel the threads of the mystery. He begins the painstaking process of interviewing the townspeople, and it quickly becomes apparent that Adela a hard-working campesina who never learned to read and write and Don Roque had one thing in common: the beautiful Ixelia Cruz. The love of Adela's life, Ixelia was one of Don Roque's many possessions until Adela lured her away.
The interviews with Adela's family, neighbors, and former lovers shed light on the circumstances of her death and reveal the lively community left reeling by her brutal murder, including: her older sister Mariela and her four children, who spent Christmas morning with their beloved aunt, excitedly unwrapping the gifts she brought them that fateful day; her neighbor and friend, Lizbeth Hodgson, the beautiful mulata who rejected Adela's passionate advances early in their relationship; Padre Uriel, who did not welcome Adela to mass because she loved women (though he has no qualms about his lengthy affair with a married woman); her former lover Gloria, the town's midwife, who is forever destined to beg her charges to name their newborn daughters Adela.
Through stories and gossip that expose jealousies, scandals, and misfortunes, Sirias lovingly portrays the community of La Curva, Nicaragua, in all its evil and goodness. The winner of the Chicano / Latino Literary Prize, this spellbinding novel captures the essence of a world rarely seen in American literature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Sirias brings to life a small Nicaraguan town as it reacts to the brutal murder of Adela, a beautiful young lesbian who made the mistake of challenging a wealthy landowner by luring away his mistress. The novel is based on a true story, which Sirias researched while visiting Nicaragua. He is personified as a professor spending the summer near his parents' birthplace, where he hears the story of the lesbian lovers, and attempts to reconstruct the days before and after Adela's demise. By means of his interviews, the reader comes to know Adela's family, her former lover (who feared for Adela's safety), Adela's former husband (who never dreamed that being a lesbian would get her killed), and Adela's magnetic and stunningly beautiful lover Ixelia, who was prostituted by her mother at age 11. The problems faced by homosexuals in Nicaragua are encapsulated in this one case: Adela's murder is deemed a minor offense because she was a lesbian. A provocative novel that opens up a little-known world to its readers.
Deborah Donavan --Booklist

About the Author

SILVIO SIRIAS is the author of the novel, Bernardo and the Virgin (Northwestern University Press, 2007), and he has written and edited several books on Latino/a literature, including Julia Alvarez: A Critical Companion (Greenwood Press, 2001) and Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya (University Press of Mississippi, 1998). He received his doctorate in Spanish from the University of Arizona and worked as a professor of Spanish and U.S. Latino/a literature for several years before returning to live in Nicaragua in 1999. He currently lives in Panama.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Arte Publico Pr (September 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558855920
• ISBN-13: 978-1558855922
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A Nicaraguan-American, Silvio Sirias is originally from Los Angeles, where he grew up until the age of eleven. His parents then moved to Nicaragua, their country of origin. This move is, without a doubt, the most significant milestone in his life as it shaped the bicultural and bilingual way in which he perceives the world. As an adolescent living in Nicaragua, he learned that Central America is full of wondrous, and often heartbreaking, stories. During those years, the realms of politics, family life, literature, and spirituality became of particular interest to him.

After graduating from high school, Sirias returned to Los Angeles to attend college. He fell in love with the study of literature and eventually received a doctorate in Spanish from the University of Arizona. For several years afterward he worked as a professor of Spanish and U.S. Latino and Latina literature. But then, just as he had earned tenure at Appalachian State University, in North Carolina, an irresistible urge to return to Nicaragua overcame him. He surrendered to the call and moved back there in 1999.

Since adolescence Sirias has enjoyed writing, but he is a late bloomer in the writing of fiction. Somewhat bored with producing works of literary criticism, while conducting interviews with several Latino and Latina novelists--as part of a project to compile a collection of conversations with these authors--he saw how much fun they were having as pioneers in a new U.S. literary horizon, so he decided to join in.

In terms of scholarly writing, in addition to numerous published articles, he wrote JULIA ALVAREZ: A CRITICAL COMPANION (Greenwood Press, 2001)--a full-length study of the novels of the talented Dominican-American author. He also prepared the second edition of Salomón de la Selva's TROPICAL TOWN AND OTHER POEMS (Arte Público Press, 1998). Originally published in 1918, by the John Lane Company in New York, TROPICAL TOWN represents the first English-language collection of a poet of Latin American descent to be published in the United States. With Salomón de la Selva being from Nicaragua, and also writing in English, Sirias has felt a lifelong connection with this author. To produce this edition, he received a grant from the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. Also, out of admiration for the work of Rudolfo Anaya, Sirias collected and co-edited the interviews that appear in CONVERSATIONS WITH RUDOLFO ANAYA (University Press of Mississippi, 1999).

With BERNARDO AND THE VIRGIN (Northwestern University Press, 2005), he launched his career as a novelist. Hailed by MOON HANDBOOKS' GUIDE TO NICARAGUA as a work that "stands head and shoulders above other books about Nicaragua," BERNARDO AND THE VIRGIN is based on the "true" tale of the Virgin Mary's 1980 apparition in the small village of Cuapa--an event that had significant religious and political repercussions. Because of the broad canvas of this "epic" account of Nicaragua in the latter half of the 20th century, the author had the opportunity to explore every theme that possesses him: politics, history, religion, spirituality, family, war, immigration, biculturalism, shifting traditions, superstitions, and death.

MEET ME UNDER THE CEIBA (Arte Público Press, 2009) won the 2007 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize for Best Novel. This story of greed, love, lust, death, and homophobia--also inspired by a true incident--relates the bizarre circumstances of the 1999 murder of a woman in the town of La Curva, in the province of Masaya. The writer Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, judge of the 2007 Chicano/Latino Literary Contest, expressed that MEET ME UNDER THE CEIBA is "a fascinating read--very well-written, with a delightful, lively pace."

Since 2002, Silvio resides in Panama, where he continues to write and teach. For more information on the author, visit his website at www.silviosirias.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars i liked this book : ), November 17, 2009

By 

mannie "mannie" (san francisco, ca) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Meet Me under the Ceiba (Paperback)

i pre-ordered this book and read it within a couple of days of receiving it. I couldn't put it down. mr. sirias deftly weaves together the non-linear backstory to the headline "trio found guilty in the murder of a dyke." it's a topic that's not given much attention in nicaragua, so I was intrigued to find out more. I was not disappointed; the author vividly recreates the community and characters that played host to the tragedy. As a queer person who lived in nicaragua at the time the story unfolds, i can attest to its accurate portrayal of people and place as well as the "sub-human" perception of the victim that was used by the defense as an attempt to justify her murder. i thank you for writing this book. well done. I hope it gets translated into spanish, i will purchase a copy for my town's library.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Silvio Sirias's Keen Sense of Place, December 11, 2009

By 

Joshua Berman (Earth Planet) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meet Me under the Ceiba (Paperback)

There is a reason Silvio Sirias was recently listed as one of [...] "2010 Top Ten 'New' Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)." Meet Me Under the Ceiba (like his last book, Bernardo and the Virgin) is a wonderfully told story AND a vibrant, accurate portrayal of everyday Nicaraguan life. I know because I have been to and lived in nearly all of the small villages where Sirias sets his stories. I can recognize actual street corners and dining rooms in his stories and I've met most of the people he writes about. Even if they are fictional, Sirias's books are peopled by strikingly real Nica characters and his narrative is peppered with sharp sensory details: the sickly sweet taste of Rojita cola, the sour smell of rum-breath, the young man wearing "an old, threadbare Cat-in-the-Hat T-shirt -- probably part of the U.S. shipment sent here after Hurricane Mitch." These details are spot-on and his descriptions do not waste a word.

As for the story of Adela, the narrator of the book puts it best: "Adela Rugama's murder is a chilling story. It's a sobering portrait of human frailty, of what can happen when we allow our weaknesses, our emotional flaws, to take control of our actions. The tale of her death shows how greed, lust, and unrestrained passions can completely cloud our judgment. Just look at everything from your perspective; that is, the perspective of a priest: virtually every single commandment was broken ... Adela Rugama's murder becomes a remarkable moral tale."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written tragedy dealing with Nicaraguan politics and prejudice, March 9, 2010

By 

L. Fannon "Lu @ Regular Rumination" (VA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meet Me under the Ceiba (Paperback)

Meet Me Under the Ceiba, written by Silvio Sirias, is the chronicle of the murder of a young woman named Adela by an unnamed researcher who became fascinated by her death. Through a series of interviews with her family, friends and even her murderers to try to piece together the events leading up to her death and her last moments.

This book is not necessarily a mystery: we know who her murderers are from the very beginning and we know exactly why they killed her. The narrator uncovers small mysteries that paint a clearer picture of Adela's last day on earth, but what this is really about is giving Adela a fair representation, trying to uncover the lies that have been protecting her murderers.

Adela, a lesbian, was passionately in love with the beautiful Ixelia, a gorgeous young woman who had been abused her whole life and was eventually sold by her mother into a relationship with Don Roque, a powerful and cruel older man. When Adela tries to rescue Ixelia from her fate, crosses the wrong paths and Don Roque and Ixelia's mother, Doña Erlinda, decide to get rid of her once and for all. Adela's story is tragic and heartbreaking; you spend most of the novel hoping that something will change, that Adela will be uncovered as alive. She was so obviously loved in her small community.

I learned a lot about the state of LGBT rights in Nicaragua and it is very difficult to read about. In Nicaragua and much of Latin America, being part of the LGBT community means that in the eyes of some people, you are less than a person. During the investigation and the trial, many people simply referred to Adela as "la cochona", the dyke, never using her name. Adela is reduced to nothing but her sexuality, she no longer has an identity.

Meet Me Under the Ceiba begins with a quote from Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez: "none of us could continue living without an exact knowledge of the place and mission assigned to us by fate." There is certainly some inspiration from Chronicle of a Death Foretold in Sirias' narration, but it is more straightforward in Meet Me Under the Ceiba. There are many intriguing levels of narration since the story is told completely in flashbacks and interviews, the painful reality is that because Adela is no longer here, we will never really know what happened to her.

Meet Me Under the Ceiba is an important novel. It addresses Nicaraguan LGBT rights and also the failure of the judicial system. Most importantly, it paints a tragic portrait of one woman's unfortunate death in the hopes of stopping future deaths. Siarias' story is based on the true murder of Aura Rosa Pavón and at the end he describes which aspects of the story were fact and which were fiction, but in the end I am so grateful that Sirias told this story, because it is absolutely one that needed to be heard. I definitely recommend Meet Me Under the Ceiba, not only for the important issues that it puts out into the open, but also because it is a highly readable novel that will keep you an edge.