Customer Reviews

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1968, during the summer preceding his senior year at Las Cruces High School in southern New Mexico, seventeen-year-old Sammy Santos hooks up with Juliana Rios. The powerful and achingly tragic story Sammy recounts of Juliana and that summer is but a mere preface in this stunning ode to growing up in the barrio--a neighborhood that some joker has named Hollywood. I alternately laughed, cheered, and cried as Sammy and his Hollywood friends encounter the prejudices, the Church, the hormones, the War, the drugs, the violence, the music, the aspirations, and the dress code, while making their way through that year both inside and outside of the barrio. If I had to choose a single "top" book from the 200+ new books for teens that I've read in 2004, SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD would be the one.

This is a book I highly recommend. I got it in the mail on Sat and finished it by the next day.
It can be at times very depressing to read, in that Catcher in the Rye type of way. The difference is that Sammy isn't born into a life of privelege, and his obstacles extend beyond his own wonderings. His immidiate world is filled with economic and social harship.
Sammy goes through so much that you can't even imagine what else could possibly happen, but you want to be there with him when it does. It is very honest, vivid and well-written. I really meant to give this 5 STARS, but Amazon doesn't seem to let me change this.

"We have plans. Then something happens." Sammy has plans: to go to college, to get out of the barrio, to love Juliana. Although Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood takes place in the Hollywood barrio of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1968/69, it is a timeless story of teen hopes and fears, love and loss, and what it is like to grow up poor and of color. Sammy, called The Librarian by his friends for his scholarly ways, falls in love with Juliana the summer before his senior year. By summer's end, she has died tragically and senselessly, and Sammy "[doesn't] care. Not about anything. Not anymore." But despite his anger and the pain of his loss, the demands of his friends and his family only increase in his senior year and Sammy is pulled into their lives. These are real teenagers, who drink, party, take drugs, have sex, swear, push the limits of school administrations and the law. Sammy agrees to be campaign manager for Gigi who is running for student body president on a platform of "shakin' up the school." Some of his friends face the draft and service in Vietnam, and everyone knows that poor Hispanic boys of Hollywood come back in pine boxes. Two friends are brutally beaten for being gay. One friend dies of heroin addiction. His father is injured in an automobile accident. Things happen.
Sammy maneuvers through the minefields of student elections, drugs, protests, racism homophobia, and loss and finds a resiliency he doesn't know he has. Like all teenagers, he thinks his life will start when he gets to college. But he is deeply involved in the life of Hollywood. Saenz has found an authentic voice in Sammy who is full of the angst and confusion of all teenagers but is also perceptive, sensitive and compassionate. This is a beautifully realized story of what it meant in 1968 to grow up in the barrio. Today, teens growing up in the ghettos face the same problems Sammy and his friends faced.

This book is handsdown one of the best YA books I've read in ages. I am a writer and it made me want to write and write and write. I adored Sammy's voice--increasingly cynical, but with a leading edge of hope. Saenz is brilliant. Read. This. Book.

My daughter and I loved this book! Having grown up in Las Cruces, NM in the 1960's and having attended the other high school in the early 1970's, it was extremely easy to relate to Benjamin's jewel of a story. I highly recommend it for families who struggled with all the challenges in high school in a small community. Bejamin deserves a huge gold star!

This novel covers a year in the life of a Hispanic teenager living in a Florida barrio in the late sixties. The voice of Sammy, the main character, is authentic and his personality is vivid and lovable. I was rooting for him from page one through the end.

The author also captures the flavor of the barrio and Sammy's high school through wonderful portrayals of Sammy's girlfriend Juliana, his Hispanic and Jewish friends, his caring family, and his next door neighbor. They practically step off the page.

Finally, the book, through portrayals of Vietnam soldiers, school protests, and diminishing hemlines, makes the late sixties come alive.

Sammy and Juliana is a wonderful novel.

I really enjoyed this book, but I think its a shame that they are marketing it as Young Adult. This is a book that deserves a wider audience than just teens, as many adults will be able to relate due to the era.