Spidertown: Spanish-language edition (Paperback)

by Abraham Rodriguez (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
An impressive first novel about a drug dealer's struggle to escape a dead-end life in the South Bronx.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This first novel tells the story of Miguel, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican American crack runner in the South Bronx. He falls in love with Cristalena, whose disapproval of what crack has done to her neighborhood forces him to look at his life from a different perspective. His struggle to hang onto Cristalena puts him in conflict with the world of the streets. Rodriguez ( The Boy Without a Flag, LJ 10/15/92) writes with the authority of an insider, clearly taking his work seriously, placing himself in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Richard Wright as an author who will look at and bring into the open a side of society that might otherwise remain hidden. This highly recommended work is mandatory for any library serving an urban or Hispanic community. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/93.
- David Dodd, Benicia P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 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: 402 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1. ed edition (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375701788
• ISBN-13: 978-0375701788
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,403,019 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Visceral view of urban life, August 4, 1998

By	Anthony P. Mayo "Tony Mayo" (Virginia near D.C., USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Spidertown (Paperback)

Ever wonder, as I have, what it is like to come of age in the South Bronx? To be a citizen of the world's greatest nation, a short ride from Trump Tower, commuting distance from a million high paying jobs yet to fear for your life night and day, to have your planning horizon be limited to a few days and a few blocks, to see crime as a route to respectability?

To enter another person's world, to see things as they see them, to allow for different reactions to similar circumstances is to connect with people in a powerful way. Such empathy, compassion, and insight are essential for succeeding with the Genuine Selling system and to living a fulfilling life of Genuine Success. Listening to the stories of people in circumstances different from your own is entertaining exercise that develops this important skill. This novel (like _When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth_ by Fernanda Eberstadt and _Ellen Foster_ by Kaye Gibbons) offers unusually intimate and ! immersive experiences of worlds most business people never encounter, yet the practice it offers with escaping our own narrow versions of reality can help us to be more receptive to the various worlds of the people we manage and sell to every day.

Mr. Rodriguez grew up in one of America's most dangerous neighborhoods and wrote this book while he was still there. Spidertown is blunt and vivid and begins to answer the question often in my mind when I hear of people in such circumstances, "Why don't you just go somewhere else?" Getting out is not so easy when you are so far in that it gets into you.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There's always hope in a desperate situation, January 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Spidertown: A Novel (Hardcover)

16 year-old Miguel want's out of the live-fast-die-young drug trade that permeates the South Bronx. The glimmer of hope that arrives,allowing him to even consider leaving his cracklord mentor and friend Spider, is a young beauty named Cristalena. The novel is fast-paced and Abraham Rodriguez,Jr. lets you feel Miguel's frustration and pain, as he has some very adult decisions to make. Often you forget that he is only a teen who's only worries should be getting up early for school the next morning...not whether he'll survive a drive-by shooting, or get "iced" by his fellow compatriots in the drug trade. As a white reader of this novel, I didn't think I'd be able to relate to the Latino characters in the story. But as a college sophomore, I relate to Amelia, the college student-turned-crackhead-turned college student, who knows the only way out of the streets of the South Bronx is by getting off of them and getting an education. You feel the frustration, desperation, and hopelessness that all these characters feel. Even the dealers and pimps themselves admit that they know this is the only hand they have been alloted to play in life, and therefore, since this is all they know, dealing drugs is all they will do. The violence will go on, no matter how senseless we all feel it is. Rodriguez attacks white people as being the cause of the South Bronx's state of chaos. He is right, although I would go farther by blaming the U.S. government, which essentially are supposed to be the "people" anyway. Unfortunately, the wealthy are the only ones who ever really benefit from any type of government. But even in the South Bronx, and other cities like it across America, young people as well as old, hold onto hope as the last miracle for survival against what must seem to them, a pre-ordained situation of hopelessness. Miguel and the other young people who must eke out a living in a place where parents don't want them, school is pointless, and a job at McDonald's are for chumps, are the voice of a generation that aren't crying or whining, but work with what they have, simply in order to live another day.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our stories, told with dignity, at last ..., October 15, 1999

By A Customer

During Spidertown's first printing I read it and was so moved I passed the book along, it found its way from Co-Op City to Fordham, from Harlem to Queens ... and it may have been the first and last time that those friends of mine, some of them no longer with us, saw their lives potrayed in print with the honesty and pride that they deserve ... Abraham Rodriguez Jr. gave them something precious ... the knowledge that our stories are worth telling ... worth reading .... I never did get that original copy back, it's nice to know the book has been reprinted ... it's nice to know Rodriguez' genius has been recognized ... it's nice to have our stories told with such dignity ... finally ...