The Rag Doll Plagues [Paperback]

Alejandro Morales (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1991

a novel akin to Latin American magical realists

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mexican fiction writer Morales ( Brick People ) exhibits his range in a novel showing Hispanic doctors battling deadly infectious diseases over three centuries. The first section, a rather formal historical account, tells of an 18th-century Spanish physician sent to Mexico to diagnose and cure a plague, LaMona. The epidemic eventually subsides by itself, but the physician has fallen in love with New Spain and decided to make it his home. A contemporary Hispanic doctor living in Los Angeles affectingly narrates the book's second portion. When his wife, a hemophiliac, contracts AIDS through a contaminated blood transfusion, he takes her to Mexico to participate in an Indian healing ritual; although spiritually uplifting, the ceremony cannot halt the disease's ravages. The second doctor's grandson, also a physician, relates the final story, set in the future. A plague eerily similar to LaMona sweeps the population of Lamex, a U.S./Mexican technocratic confederation. The medical establishment is helpless until the narrator discovers that transfusions from pure-blooded Mexico City residents will cure the disease--the metropolis is so hideously polluted that its inhabitants' blood has genetically mutated, developing an antibody to the plague. Morales's unabashed ethnic chauvinism becomes hard to take: AIDS, it appears, was invented in a U.S. laboratory and exported to Africa; the Anglo-European presence that has oppressed Mexicans for centuries finally gets its just deserts in the SF finale. However, inventive writing and interesting premises spark the work.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this slim trilogy, written in the tradition of magic realism, Mexican American author Morales offers an imaginative, prophetic work that readers will find both intriguing and challenging. He puts forward three separate stories of life, death, and disease in colonial Mexico, present-day Mexico and Southern California, and mid-21st century technocratic Lames (Los Angeles and Mexico). Not only plot elements but the poetic use of language thread the stories together, adding a surreal quality that forces the reader to examine the changing nature of the Mexican landscape, health issues, and cultural values. The stories are further held together by two central characters, Father Gregory and Papa Damian. These three gripping pieces help the reader gain insight into some of the ethical questions facing modern society. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries, particularly those with interests in Hispanic issues.
- Mary Molinaro, Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Arte Publico Pr (October 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558851046
• ISBN-13: 978-1558851047
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, February 19, 2011

By 

B. Hernandez (San Joaquin Valley, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rag Doll Plagues (Paperback)

I read this book in a graduate seminar and loved it. The book uses disease to connect 3 different time periods and three different men, and is set in Mexico. It is a dystopian novel, so it is not exactly "feel-good" but it IS well-written. For fans of sci-fi, Chicano/a literature or people interested in fictional representations of plagues, this is a great book that works on multiple levels. It has a strong element of metafiction, so literary scholars will love that. It also looks into the future (with robotic 'people'), and all the while it addresses historical racism against people of Mexican descent both in Mexico and in the U.S.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book will piss you off!, November 12, 2009

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B. Bachtel - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rag Doll Plagues (Paperback)

Morales overreaches himself here. His prose is awkward and at times tries to be so grandiose it becomes cheesy. It's not the gruesomeness of the story that bothers me as much as the rampant sexism and how he seems to purport not racial equality, but merely flipping the racial balance so natives rule. What kind of solution is that? Poor story, terrible message, incredibly bad writing.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Yuck!, October 22, 2009

By 

chucky (GA, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Rag Doll Plagues (Paperback)

Well it will stick in your head, but I am sure that is not a good thing.