Winterness

by Juan Dicent

Combining a lively satirical wit and an pitch-perfect ear for the inflections and nuances of the immigrants' spanglish, the short stories of Juan Dicent, dominican short story writer and poet and newyorker by residence, manage to elicit both rawness and tenderness in their portrayal of latin families building a new world, very much their own, in New York City. Both cultured and streetwise, Dicent's impeccable technique of indirectly illuminating emotions while still retaining a thoroughly fresh and inventive approach to story telling manages to pack quite an emotional wallop in stories just a few pages long, delivering a wildly innovative take on a culture previously portrayed by his compatriot Junot Díaz. The costarrican poet Luis Chaves commented regarding this "[Dicent] transmits first-hand the pulse of all these people living like extras in a big production filmed relentlessly in the planet's most conspicuous city. For these extras it is Winterness all year long."

Genres: Short Stories

188 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

Reviews

[Dr Zorlak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afilado y certero como un bisturí. Económico, fat-free. Este libro es uno de los instrumentos más interesantes y despiadados de la literatura caribeña contemporánea. Dicent tiene un instinto literario natural, puntual, efectivo. Entra y sale del español y del inglés sin que su texto caiga en lo macarrónico, la pose o el performance. No quiere impresionar ni a gringos ni a latinos; está en otra onda, la más difícil, la de ser sincero con su arte y consigo mismo. Es como si no le importara nada... he makes all the wrong noises. El humor del libro bordea el peligro y la tragedia, es decir, que es perfecto. Su "delivery" es exacto e impávido. "Boy Meets Bitch" es el mejor cuento corto de toda la literatura dominicana contemporánea.

[Camila Antigua Valdez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a book made for dominicans. Sometimes it turned out to be hard to read, because of the lack of structure. Overall, it's a short and funny book written in spanglish. It was nice to read such realistic stories about the dominican culture and its people.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente libro! Me encantó cómo maneja la dicotomía Dominicana/EEUU, el que se va pero no pertenece al lugar que se fue ni tampoco del que partió. Algunos relatos son simplemente maravillosos.