Trini

by Estela Portillo Trambley

The sole novel of beloved Chicana author Estela Portillo Trambley, Trini is the story of one girl's journey across borders and into womanhood. Born in the rural Tarahumara region of Mexico, young Trini shares her family's struggle to survive in a beautiful but inhospitable terrain. When the hunger for land ownership drives Trini to strike out alone, she experiences love and loss, tragedy and betrayal, as she journeys across the border in pursuit of independence in a booming postwar America.
Rich with detail and beautiful language, Trini sweeps through the landscape of rural Mexico to crumbling city brothels, adobe border villages, and finally to the wide-open promise of the American Southwest. This classic tale of the Borderlands reveals the hunger and fierce joy at the heart of 1950s Chicano culture.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

ESTELA PORTILLO TRAMBLEY was a writer and award-winning playwright from El Paso, Texas. She was the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, and graduated with a degree in English literature from the University of Texas-El Paso. She taught in the El Paso public school system, and was one of the founders of Los Pobres, the first Hispanic Theater in El Paso. Trambley also hosted a local political radio talk show called Stella Says in Texas. Her play, Blacklight won second place in the 1985 New York Shakespeare Festival's Hispanic American playwright's competition. In 1986, she was inducted into the El Paso Woman's Hall of Fame, and was named Author of the Pass by the El Paso Herald Post in 1990. The publication of Sor Juana and Other Plays brought her widespread critical acclaim and national attention. Trini is her only novel. Trambley passed away in December of 1999 at age 72, and her papers are kept in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Colletion at the University of Texas at Austin.

(from http://www.feministpress.org/books/es...)

Reviews

[Harry Brake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Respect, struggle, spirituality, perseverance, faith, strength and SO MUCH MORE is found in Estela
Portillo Trambley's novel! I admit, I struggled in the first third of the book and wondered if I would be able to stay through the intense details through the whole novel. Then something happened.

The bildungsroman that unfolded made you cringe, laugh, and feel pity so much, the emotions of a wide variety become touched. I still want to go back and discover the many locations I have never heard of in this text before. I love that original vocabulary from the Tarahumara as well as descriptions that it could not be interpreted as occurring anywhere but Mexico.

The beauty, depth, and ties to culture are rooted through every page and weave one of the most reflective spins on Mexico and the human experience.