Lady Without Land: Señorita Sin Tierra

by Krystal Anali Vazquez

Lady without Land is a story told in fragments about a señorita who feels lost in and lost without Los Angeles. She uses classic literature and cocktail recipes to organize and populate bits and pieces of a life: growing up as a Mexican middle-class girl in a predominantly white suburb where neighbors labeled her family the "dirty" Mexicans; being bullied by an older sister on car rides from Los Angeles to Mexico, grappling with a father's gambling addiction, and, later, his death; journeying on the continuous carousel of lovers the Pacific and Atlantic coasts have to offer. A shaken and stirred abecedarian, a sloppy yet put-together künstlerroman, about charting one's life path amid cultural pressures and the grip of the ever-present past, the book can be read forwards or backwards and, with any hope, completely out of sequence so that no reader can read this novel the same way twice.

250 pages, Paperback

Published November 6, 2024

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to the business (busyness) of life. There's a lot going on here, and it's important. Or there's little going on here and it's mundane. It's a coming of age; it's yes-and; it's chasing its own tail. Its romantic status would be "it's complicated". It's the 1904 St. Louis Olympic marathon (go on, look it up -it's wild). It's macrame spun into the Bayeux Tapestry. It's a hydra eating its own heads. It's not easy. I may not have made all of the connections, but I enjoyed it. It's a drunken night out: you're not going to remember how you got home, but you know you had a good time. 3.75 stars rounded up to 4.