Palm Latitudes [Hardcover]

Kate Braverman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1988

Written nearly a decade after Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman's second novel and arguably her chef d’oeuvre, explores the intertwined lives of three women who await absolution and revelation in the bougainvillea- and violence-filled "barrio" of Los Angeles. Frances Ramos is a voluptuous prostitute who flaunts her wealth and is held in high esteem by the local street gangs. Gloria Hernandez is a dutiful young wife and mother—until her husband’s act of betrayal sparks her growing estrangement and fury. Marta Ortega, a prophetic old woman connected viscerally with the forces/elements of nature, nods as past and present mingle and quietly charts the cross-pollenization of her turbulent neighborhood, and of human destiny.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Propelled by a compelling plot that is enhanced rather than hampered by the lush, sprawling prose, this luminous second novel by the author of Lithium for Medea is a dazzling piece of writing. Set in the Mexican barrio of Los Angeles, it tells of three women: a whore known as La Puta de la Luna, a housewife who murders a social worker and a weary matriarch inhabit this almost mythic tale of destiny and oppression. Braverman is an accomplished poet, and her use of language, while sometimes florid, is more often simply breathtaking. Her characters are able to utter fantastic and oblique commentary without appearing as mouthpieces for their creator, and it is to her credit that the authentic Latin American flavor remains consistent. "They don't clap correctly," complains a mother of her daughters. "It sounds hollow, shallow, as if even in celebration they were saving their hands for a more important purpose." The male-dominated, macho world of these women is at once sad, funny and ultimately limited, yet Braverman's women are powerful even in defeat. This is a virtuoso performance.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

$19.95. f Marta Ortega, the 74-year-old queen of Flores Street and witch of her Los Angeles barrio, is ready to die. Musing on the richness of her life, Marta reflects on the bittersweet experiences of her daughters and grandchildren, her friends, and her garden of hybrid orchids. Intersecting Marta's memories are those of two other women: Gloria Hernandez, a presumably passive housewife, who has gone mad and murdered an Anglo neighbor; and Francisca Ramos, a flamboyant prostitute from a war-torn Central American country. In a poetic tour-de-force, Braverman plumbs the depths of three archetypesmatriarch, wife, and whoreportraying each as a unique, believable human being. Highly recommended. Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Linden Pub; First Printing edition (June 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671645420
• ISBN-13: 978-0671645427
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,591,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite Reckonings, May 8, 2000

By 

"doctordiva" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Palm Latitudes (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

I first came across Ms. Braverman through a serendipitous reading of her Squandering the Blue. Palm Latitudes is an extraordinary work which traces the rooted infrastructure of three women's lives, each one a hybrid creation of the industrial village of Los Angeles, each one a cantadora of resonant flesh and spirit. To read Braverman's poetic masterpiece is to experience literary alchemy. I keep the novel at my bedside, as I have done for the past five years, and am repeatedly renewed by its presence. This is an masterful author to cherish; this is a work to sustain you through life's many quickenings and passages.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece of Literature, January 17, 2006

By 

J. Kingston "Dusty Ribbons" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Palm Latitudes: A Novel (Paperback)

I read Palm Latitudes while being snowed in during a freak blizzard, without power, heat or lights. I read most of the book out loud, the brillance of the language, the power of the word and a solitary candle kept me warm. It was as if I entered those Palm Latitudes during that snowstorm and those characters were with me.

Braverman, a Jewish woman, got a lot of flack for using three Latina voices for her characters. What her critics failed to recognized was she was creating a mythology, both feminine and tropical and it had nothing to do with the old white ways.

One of the characters in the novel comes to the realization, "We don't live in an age of anxiety. We live in an age of terror." I think this novel was ahead of it's time (written in the early 80's and not published until '89) with it's inclusion of AIDS, and the only redeemable males in the novel are homosexual, perhaps most people are not ready to enter these Latitudes. But if you deny yourself access, you'll be denying yourself the magic that the written page was meant to offer.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, insightful novel., August 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Palm Latitudes (Hardcover)

Kate Braverman is a writer who has been praised highly by important writers like John Rechy and Joan Didion. In this novel, Braverman continues to assert her unique view of modern life, especially in Los Angeles, which becomes a metaphor for greater latitudes. Her prose is rich and evocative, haunting at times. That this novel and others of her writings are out of print testifies to the indifference of publishers today to fulfilling their function to perpetuate fine writing.