Palm Latitudes

by Kate Braverman

Written nearly a decade after Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman's second novel and arguably her chef d’oeuvre, explores the intertwined lives of three women who await absolution and revelation in the bougainvillea- and violence-filled "barrio" of Los Angeles. Frances Ramos is a voluptuous prostitute who flaunts her wealth and is held in high esteem by the local street gangs. Gloria Hernandez is a dutiful young wife and mother—until her husband’s act of betrayal sparks her growing estrangement and fury. Marta Ortega, a prophetic old woman connected viscerally with the forces/elements of nature, nods as past and present mingle and quietly charts the cross-pollenization of her turbulent neighborhood, and of human destiny.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Kate Braverman (born 1950) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, originally from Los Angeles, California, who has garnered great acclaim for works including the novels Lithium for Medea (1979), Palm Latitudes (1988), Wonders of the West (1993), and The Incantation of Frida K (2001). Her most significant work has been in stylistic hybrid forms built upon poems and rendered as short stories. She has published two books of short stories, "Squandering the Blue" (1990) and "Small Craft Warnings" (1997). She has also published four books of poetry. She has won three Best American Short Stories awards, an O. Henry Award, Carver Short Story Award, as well as the Economist Prize and an Isherwood Fellowship. She was also the first recipient of Graywolf Press Creative Nonfiction Award for Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir, published February 2006.

Braverman has a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and an MA in English from Sonoma State University. She was a founding member of the Venice Poetry Workshop, Professor of Creative Writing at CSULA, staff faculty of the UCLA Writer's Program and taught privately a workshop which included Janet Fitch, Cristina Garcia and Donald Rawley. She lived in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful poetically written novels of all time. And to think it took her ten years to get it published because the publishers didn't think anyone would want to read about Hispanic women in LA. The audacity! I love this book and often pick it up and read a few paragraphs when I want inspiration.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. Stunning, gorgeous, and impossible to describe.

[Diann Blakely]

Who just won the P & W Jackson Award, a $50,000 prize given in honor of "an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition"? Mullen teaches at UCLA, and the best imaginable description of her work comes from a former long-term resident of Los Angeles, one of my surpassingly favorite writers, Kate Braverman. While utterly singular in their respective gifts, the two women resemble each other in their subversive--if not felonious, even treacherous--phrases and cadences and magic. Speaking of her own work, Braverman says:

"I've tropicalized and feminized the language. You must get into the fortress of words and from there subvert. Los Angeles was a border town, a languid Mexican fishing village rocked by an Oakie beat. An English that flows elegant, seductive, the Santanas in her skirt. The prototypical fire is the word. All else is fashion."

Mullen herself was born not 90 miles away from me in the resonantly named town of Florence, AL; but stranger things have happened: I was reared, like Angela Davis, Emmylou Harris, and Sonia Sanchez, in Bombingham itself. Mullen, however, I like to call the love-child of W. C. Handy and Gertrude Stein. Just ask Ms. Davis, author of BLUES LEGACIES AND BLACK FEMINISM (Pantheon, 1998), who lives now not far up the road from Braverman herself--at least in her "L.A. Noir" days.


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[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important book. Grandiose, poetic--a little pretentious. Well worth reading. You read Braverman for the sentences.

This novel sticks it to the patriarchy with a kill shot. Braverman is one pissed off bitch, I'll tell ya. Ahead of her time. There's not one molecule of humor here and it would've been welcome. That's my only quibble. The men are all, to a man, weak and disposable. Okay. It must have felt very satisfying for her to write this. All the female characters are toxic, polluted, unhappy and extremely philosophical. The main character, Marta, makes a late entrance and is 100% Kate Braverman's hero. Of course, Kate is speaking through her. These are Braverman's views, hammered home repeatedly. But the men? Pigs. Dogs. Weak-minded, stupid, entitled, selfish, worthless--in a way that shocks considering it was written in the 80s. All evil, except for the old queens next door, naturally, because they're essentially harmless, right?

I appreciated this book for its heat, uncompromising rage and beautiful sentences. One of the first highly intellectualized feminist novels, gritty as hell and captures LA from the female POV like nothing you've ever read. Probably would be dismissed as cultural appropriation were it published today but fuck that PC overreach shit. Braverman pours her soul out on every page. I have to think she speaks for every woman in some way. If you're male, this novel might change the way you think and act and I'm sure that was Braverman's aim.

[Helen McAlary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not for me. The only reason I even finished was to be prepared for a book discussion. The language was overwhelming, it was too much. For me it got in the way of the characters. I wasn’t able to understand who they were or really get interested in them. I also had some concerns about the negative portrayal of relationships between men & women in the Latino community and had mixed feelings about Braverman, a white Jewish woman, speaking as and for Latina women. Gloria was completely uncompelling, uninteresting and frustrating. The only character I liked was Marta and even then I still didn’t connect through Braverman's style of writing. I can understand this as a poem for lovers of poetry but as a novel it was a fail to me.

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

all i remember is the experience of her prose-which is dizzying-and the sections i have used again and again in my artwork.

braverman is the woman who said that 'sometimes just being alone with myself in a room is more stimulation than i can bear.'

here's a clip that i love- the end of the book. no more a "spoiler" than the end of Gatsby.

http://books.google.com/books?id=29og...

[Ruth Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stunning language, very dense but beautifully so, I think to mirror the dense jungles of the main character's origins/ancestral lands, as the characters' plights were mirrored by the actual desert lands they physically grew up in. This is one giant poem. Rich imagery, surreal, colorful, gorgeous. 4 stars because it took a while to get through, and because I feel some things were repetitive, though I acknowledge they're so in a way that feels like an incantation, a spell, that also fits with the narrative. Definitely not for you if you're more plot driven and not attracted to lush descriptive poetry.

[Michele Rios Petrelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman was a poet and quintessential artist of words. Such profound and poignant character development between three women. I could only "dream" of mastering such intricately detailed prose and make it a masterpiece of interwoven colors, texture and space of time fluidly captured through the eyes of women who possess depth, substance and beauty in their rough and uneventful lives.

Must read this if you can understand the complexity and experimentation of her style!

[Frank Strausser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kate Braverman’s PALM LATITUDES is a broadening of the LA genre novel in that it has nothing to do with Hollywood. It takes place in the Barrio. I would have liked to see the three stories connect somehow, but this is a rewarding literary book. I’m fascinated with LA genre novels and have written my own PLASTIC.

[Eugenie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous, almost poetic language!

[Kimiduf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonder if words

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book, full of strange poetry and cosmically interwoven characters.

[useyourimogenation · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kate said no edits
Brb writing the movie version

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie this was some pretty heavy sledding and difficult to get into, but once you kind of put your faith in her voice, it works in the way great literature should work. And I might even read parts of it again which is important for a five-star rating of my variety

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something about Kate Braverman that reminds me of someone I've never been, this Brave LA Girl With Problems (the smart kind, not the celubutante of late). I've never lived in LA (the closest I ever got was San Bernardino) but when I want to go there I just pick up this book. I did grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so there are parts of California that I recognize like a distant cousin. But this book is luminous. Dusty and scratchy but luminous.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

We had to read this rather quickly for class, but there were many parts I got into. You can really feel the characters' alienation in this story. In my American Lit. class in Spring 2013, we had a unit that focused on American women writers, and we covered the theme of 'regression in marriage.' You can spot marital regression all over this novel.

[Gregg Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic , about three cycles of being , I don't think it matters they being "Hispanic" . One of the few novels I have ever read that is like a giant poem. Palm latitudes . Kate once said if you want to be a writer you must spend 18 months in your bathrobe . It don't come easy . There are very few writers at this level .

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book about the barrios in LA but need to read it again to decide how I feel about its merits inasmuch as more than ten years have gone by since the first reading...

[Impyfiche]

Find on her website to read.

[Christine]

Find on her website to read.

[Sara]

A poetic rereading of a long time favorite.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. Ever.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

These sentences are so beautiful and unctuous and volatile that I found myself reading huge swaths of the novel aloud to myself. And you should, too!

[Bebop2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything she has written but this is my favorite.