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Loteria: A Novel
In Mario Alberto Zambrano's acclaimed literary debut, "a Mexican-American girl uses the game of Lotería to reveal her memories, which add up to a heart-wrenching tale of violence, love and a broken family” (Los Angeles Times)—now available as a limited Olive Edition from Harper Perennial.
With her older sister, Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, the young girl retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards—a Mexican version of bingo featuring bright, colorful images.
Neither the social worker assigned to her case nor her Aunt Tencha, who desperately pleads for her niece’s release, can cajole Luz to speak. The young girl’s only confidant is her journal. Within its pages, Luz addresses an invisible higher power, sharing her secrets and the story of her family’s tragic demise—and the terrifying night that ripped them apart forever.
Using the lotería cards as her muse, Luz picks one card from the deck with each shuffle. Each of the cards’ colorful images— mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory. Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, including the violence inflicted against her sister, the disappearance of her mother, her father’s arrest. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.
A surprising, spellbinding tale richly imaginative and atmospheric, Loteria is an exquisite debut novel from an outstanding new voice in fiction.
With her older sister, Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, the young girl retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards—a Mexican version of bingo featuring bright, colorful images.
Neither the social worker assigned to her case nor her Aunt Tencha, who desperately pleads for her niece’s release, can cajole Luz to speak. The young girl’s only confidant is her journal. Within its pages, Luz addresses an invisible higher power, sharing her secrets and the story of her family’s tragic demise—and the terrifying night that ripped them apart forever.
Using the lotería cards as her muse, Luz picks one card from the deck with each shuffle. Each of the cards’ colorful images— mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory. Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, including the violence inflicted against her sister, the disappearance of her mother, her father’s arrest. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.
A surprising, spellbinding tale richly imaginative and atmospheric, Loteria is an exquisite debut novel from an outstanding new voice in fiction.
240 pages, Paperback
First published July 2, 2013
153 people are currently reading
3356 people want to read
About the author
Mario Alberto Zambrano
2 books72 followersMario Alberto Zambrano was a contemporary ballet dancer before dedicating his time to writing fiction. He has lived in Israel, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Japan, and has danced for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballett Frankfurt, and Batsheva Dance Company. He graduated from The New School as a Riggio Honors Fellow and the Iowa Writers' Workshop as an Iowa Arts Fellow, where he also received a John C. Schupes Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction. Lotería is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 421 reviews
August 20, 2013
This wee little novel has an immense dramatic affect. The story is told from an 11 year old Mexican-American girl’s(Luz) point of view. She’s writing in a journal to God. Her Aunt gave Luz a deck of Loteria cards and suggested to Luz to use the cards for inspiration to her write in her journal. Loteria is a Mexican game of chance, similar to our Bingo games. There are 54 cards with images of a riddle. The novel begins with an image of a spider. Through the first card we learn that Luz is in a Government facility where she is supposed to “cooperate” with counselors about an event that involves her father being in jail. Each “chapter” is a new image. Through the images, Zmbrano has Luz narrating her life. The reader learns of the dysfunctional environment in which Luz was raised. Not only was Luz raised in a physically dangerous environment, but an emotionally disturbing one too. Each card gives the reader a deeper understanding of her life. I really liked that idea, to tell a story based upon images and what that provokes in memory. The reader learns that Luz’s older sister, Estrella is in the ICU. There is also the mystery of her Mother, who plays a prominent roll in Luz’s life, but is curiously missing at the time of the important event. Ultimately, the reader learns what transpired that fateful night and what lead to her sister being in the ICU and her father being in jail. This is a sad tale of the underprivileged and the poor. It’s a moving story. Zambrano is a gifted storyteller.
August 26, 2013
(Originally published at UnaVitaVagabonda.)
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Mario Alberto Zambrano’s Lotería: A Novel is a gorgeous book.
What's unfortunate is that, when I say this, I'm referring exclusively to the physical object.
In publishing Lotería, HarperCollins has produced the kind of elegant, expensive-looking (and expensive, at $22 for 272 pages, many of them blank) book that is an endangered species in American libraries: Pleasingly hefty in a 7”x5” format, Lotería features solid cover boards that bespeak serious reading; heavy, deckle-edge paper; and ravishing full-color drawings, at each chapter head, of cards from a Mexican lotería deck. (The illustrations are by Jarrod Taylor.)
As Zambrano quickly explains, lotería is not what the calque would suggest: not the lottery, but a game of chance similar to bingo. The lotería dealer draws the cards and, rather than announce them by name, sings the dicho—the proverb or saying—that traditionally accompanies each card. If the card appears on their tablas, players mark the corresponding space with coins or even dried beans. Sometimes the dealer tries to be tricky, modifying the wording of the dicho or turning it into a pun or riddle.
In Zambrano’s Lotería, the 54 images of the lotería deck (La Corona-The Crown; El Alacrán-The Scorpion; El Nopal-The Prickly Pear Cactus, for example) serve as a sort of madeleine for the novel’s narrator, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo. Each card “sparks a random memory” (the book description tells us) and “pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation.”
The principal defect of Lotería, however, is that they actually do not. Lotería’s “snapshots” fail to coalesce into any coherent story, and the operative word in that description is “random.” Indeed, rather than become a novel, Lotería remains a series of vignettes that are less intricate than they are confusing. Many of its rambling “snapshots” contribute little or nothing to the reader’s understanding of Luz or her situation, and the forward momentum of the narrative stutters repeatedly and frequently stalls altogether.
This is, nonetheless, the kind of book that will enthrall blue-haired reading groups and WASP-y book clubs, whose members can congratulate themselves for making a tourist stop in a culture not their own. (Diane Rehm’s fawning NPR interview with Zambrano on August 5, 2013, illustrates the basic principle. Among other things, Rehm repeatedly mentioned the challenge that the novel—and especially Zambrano's use of Spanish in it—would represent for an “American audience” and “American readers,” apparently forgetting that Zambrano is American—as is every single character in the novel—and that 45 million people in the United States speak Spanish as a first or second language. Rehm’s conflation of "American" with "non-Spanish speaking" struck me as significant, as did Zambrano's failure to correct the error.)
Perhaps in one perspective, Zambrano should be faulted for none of this—a writer, especially one writing from a post-colonial position, can’t be held responsible for the way in which intellectually colonized readers consume his work.
In another perspective, which happens to be mine, there is the inescapable sense that Zambrano wrote Lotería for the specific purpose of cultural tourism: a beautiful, non-threatening (because presented in the voice of a child) excursion into the messed-up lives of working-class Mexican-Americans, rich in a National Geographic swirl of “foreign” foods, music, language, pastimes, and ethnic tragedy.
In fact, Zambrano seems so intent on transmitting a sort of folkloric reality, on foregrounding exoticism, on doing a cumbia-flavored, Spanglish-scented version of what actor and playwright Djola Bernard Branner once called the “difference-and-diversity dance” that he neglects many other aspects of his job as a novelist.
The character of Luz is one such misstep. Child narrators bring with them a host of drawbacks, of course, but Zambrano fails to overcome a single one of them. Luz, confined to a state home in the days following a convulsion of violence in her family, refuses to speak to social workers but is willing to write her story down in a journal.
So not only is there an eleven-year-old narrator; there is an eleven-year-old diarist. Suspend disbelief if you like, but Luz’s deeply wounded voice quickly begins to grate: for its self-consciousness, for its canny ability to conceal then reveal the brutal detail with studied timing, for its acute awareness of its sustained note of injured innocence. In that way, Lotería shares some of the same difficulties that plagued the insufferable Beasts of the Southern Wild.
What may have been conceived as an invitation to compassion, then, grows up to become a reinforcement of otherness: “These poor Mexican (black, Native American, African) children. They see so much tragedy at such a tender age.” More than a few reviewers appear to be convinced that this approach makes Zambrano’s novel complex; my feeling is that it reveals Zambrano’s tin ear for tone and motif.
I realize, with a review like this, that I invite the criticism that I am hostile to the book’s intercultural themes or that I have an irrational prejudice against Latin-American writing, but I would phrase the issue in another way. If we were to remove all the carefully staged mejicanidad from Lotería, what remains to make this story worth telling? Decidedly little, I would argue.
What becomes clear instead is that this is not a novel about family violence or childhood trauma, but rather that misfortune serves as an excuse to trot out cultural and ethnic differences as though they were stage props. The pathos of brown children sells, just like Talavera pottery in Puebla and squash blossom jewelry at the Plaza Mercado in Santa Fe. (See also my essay “Didgeridon’t: On the Politics of Poetry.”)
Indeed, Zambrano may be writing in a new vein of a venerable (!) American literary tradition—not the tragic mulatto, but the tragic Chicano—and he seems to be standing eternally at the reader’s shoulder, whispering. “Isn’t this dreadful? And yet, isn't it poetic? Isn’t it colorful and so very authentically Mexican? Isn’t it beautifully sad?”
Zambrano began Lotería as a memoir, but transformed the book into fiction when his memories began (as he put it) to "invade the privacy" of his family members. Many (perhaps most?) first-time writers face the same dilemma, and many (perhaps most?) resolve it in the same way. Still, even as we respect Zambrano's decision not to reveal his family's truths, it's difficult to feel he is revealing any truth at all.
----------
Mario Alberto Zambrano’s Lotería: A Novel is a gorgeous book.
What's unfortunate is that, when I say this, I'm referring exclusively to the physical object.
In publishing Lotería, HarperCollins has produced the kind of elegant, expensive-looking (and expensive, at $22 for 272 pages, many of them blank) book that is an endangered species in American libraries: Pleasingly hefty in a 7”x5” format, Lotería features solid cover boards that bespeak serious reading; heavy, deckle-edge paper; and ravishing full-color drawings, at each chapter head, of cards from a Mexican lotería deck. (The illustrations are by Jarrod Taylor.)
As Zambrano quickly explains, lotería is not what the calque would suggest: not the lottery, but a game of chance similar to bingo. The lotería dealer draws the cards and, rather than announce them by name, sings the dicho—the proverb or saying—that traditionally accompanies each card. If the card appears on their tablas, players mark the corresponding space with coins or even dried beans. Sometimes the dealer tries to be tricky, modifying the wording of the dicho or turning it into a pun or riddle.
In Zambrano’s Lotería, the 54 images of the lotería deck (La Corona-The Crown; El Alacrán-The Scorpion; El Nopal-The Prickly Pear Cactus, for example) serve as a sort of madeleine for the novel’s narrator, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo. Each card “sparks a random memory” (the book description tells us) and “pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation.”
The principal defect of Lotería, however, is that they actually do not. Lotería’s “snapshots” fail to coalesce into any coherent story, and the operative word in that description is “random.” Indeed, rather than become a novel, Lotería remains a series of vignettes that are less intricate than they are confusing. Many of its rambling “snapshots” contribute little or nothing to the reader’s understanding of Luz or her situation, and the forward momentum of the narrative stutters repeatedly and frequently stalls altogether.
This is, nonetheless, the kind of book that will enthrall blue-haired reading groups and WASP-y book clubs, whose members can congratulate themselves for making a tourist stop in a culture not their own. (Diane Rehm’s fawning NPR interview with Zambrano on August 5, 2013, illustrates the basic principle. Among other things, Rehm repeatedly mentioned the challenge that the novel—and especially Zambrano's use of Spanish in it—would represent for an “American audience” and “American readers,” apparently forgetting that Zambrano is American—as is every single character in the novel—and that 45 million people in the United States speak Spanish as a first or second language. Rehm’s conflation of "American" with "non-Spanish speaking" struck me as significant, as did Zambrano's failure to correct the error.)
Perhaps in one perspective, Zambrano should be faulted for none of this—a writer, especially one writing from a post-colonial position, can’t be held responsible for the way in which intellectually colonized readers consume his work.
In another perspective, which happens to be mine, there is the inescapable sense that Zambrano wrote Lotería for the specific purpose of cultural tourism: a beautiful, non-threatening (because presented in the voice of a child) excursion into the messed-up lives of working-class Mexican-Americans, rich in a National Geographic swirl of “foreign” foods, music, language, pastimes, and ethnic tragedy.
In fact, Zambrano seems so intent on transmitting a sort of folkloric reality, on foregrounding exoticism, on doing a cumbia-flavored, Spanglish-scented version of what actor and playwright Djola Bernard Branner once called the “difference-and-diversity dance” that he neglects many other aspects of his job as a novelist.
The character of Luz is one such misstep. Child narrators bring with them a host of drawbacks, of course, but Zambrano fails to overcome a single one of them. Luz, confined to a state home in the days following a convulsion of violence in her family, refuses to speak to social workers but is willing to write her story down in a journal.
So not only is there an eleven-year-old narrator; there is an eleven-year-old diarist. Suspend disbelief if you like, but Luz’s deeply wounded voice quickly begins to grate: for its self-consciousness, for its canny ability to conceal then reveal the brutal detail with studied timing, for its acute awareness of its sustained note of injured innocence. In that way, Lotería shares some of the same difficulties that plagued the insufferable Beasts of the Southern Wild.
What may have been conceived as an invitation to compassion, then, grows up to become a reinforcement of otherness: “These poor Mexican (black, Native American, African) children. They see so much tragedy at such a tender age.” More than a few reviewers appear to be convinced that this approach makes Zambrano’s novel complex; my feeling is that it reveals Zambrano’s tin ear for tone and motif.
I realize, with a review like this, that I invite the criticism that I am hostile to the book’s intercultural themes or that I have an irrational prejudice against Latin-American writing, but I would phrase the issue in another way. If we were to remove all the carefully staged mejicanidad from Lotería, what remains to make this story worth telling? Decidedly little, I would argue.
What becomes clear instead is that this is not a novel about family violence or childhood trauma, but rather that misfortune serves as an excuse to trot out cultural and ethnic differences as though they were stage props. The pathos of brown children sells, just like Talavera pottery in Puebla and squash blossom jewelry at the Plaza Mercado in Santa Fe. (See also my essay “Didgeridon’t: On the Politics of Poetry.”)
Indeed, Zambrano may be writing in a new vein of a venerable (!) American literary tradition—not the tragic mulatto, but the tragic Chicano—and he seems to be standing eternally at the reader’s shoulder, whispering. “Isn’t this dreadful? And yet, isn't it poetic? Isn’t it colorful and so very authentically Mexican? Isn’t it beautifully sad?”
Zambrano began Lotería as a memoir, but transformed the book into fiction when his memories began (as he put it) to "invade the privacy" of his family members. Many (perhaps most?) first-time writers face the same dilemma, and many (perhaps most?) resolve it in the same way. Still, even as we respect Zambrano's decision not to reveal his family's truths, it's difficult to feel he is revealing any truth at all.
October 24, 2023
Papi punched because he was a man, but we hit him too. There was one time when Mom grabbed the Don Pedro bottle from the coffee table and smashed it over his head. (PG 16)
Trigger warnings:: Domestic abuse, alcoholism.
It's definitely a highly invested book with great pages and colorful, bright pictures.
I was excited to read this as a Mexican and growing up playing Loteria with my mom, her sisters, and my grandma. My grandma never plays a card game without involving money or else she wouldn't play claiming it was "boring." Same to this day.
I still play with my kids. Costco just started selling a set of a more modernized version, thick cardboard and more kid friendly drawings. We use the game for Spanish vocabulary. The kids each take turns being the dealer. Fun way to learn Spanish.
Now back to the topic at hand::: The memories connected to the cards sometimes didn't have anything special to do with the card game and the memories were so jumbled it made the reader second guess what was happening.
I didn't like the overall book. It wasn't cohesive and I didn't like the style of the story telling and all the characters sucked. It reminded me of how machismo culture is big in the Hispanic community and how we normalize abuse and alcoholism. It takes a generation to cut those strings forever.
That said, book was a quick read and it's considered a YA.
Trigger warnings:: Domestic abuse, alcoholism.
It's definitely a highly invested book with great pages and colorful, bright pictures.
I was excited to read this as a Mexican and growing up playing Loteria with my mom, her sisters, and my grandma. My grandma never plays a card game without involving money or else she wouldn't play claiming it was "boring." Same to this day.
I still play with my kids. Costco just started selling a set of a more modernized version, thick cardboard and more kid friendly drawings. We use the game for Spanish vocabulary. The kids each take turns being the dealer. Fun way to learn Spanish.
Now back to the topic at hand::: The memories connected to the cards sometimes didn't have anything special to do with the card game and the memories were so jumbled it made the reader second guess what was happening.
I didn't like the overall book. It wasn't cohesive and I didn't like the style of the story telling and all the characters sucked. It reminded me of how machismo culture is big in the Hispanic community and how we normalize abuse and alcoholism. It takes a generation to cut those strings forever.
That said, book was a quick read and it's considered a YA.
August 22, 2016
Fikir şahane ancak uygulama başarısız.
Kitabın tasarımına - boyuttan kenar kesimine, yazı tipinden renkli resimlere - 5 yıldız. cidden çok özenli bir iş olmuş.
Keşke kalan için aynı şeyi söyleyebilseydim. 2/5
Kitabın tasarımına - boyuttan kenar kesimine, yazı tipinden renkli resimlere - 5 yıldız. cidden çok özenli bir iş olmuş.
Keşke kalan için aynı şeyi söyleyebilseydim. 2/5
October 30, 2013
Even before I started reading it, I was impressed with the beauty of this book with its thick pages, and full page images of Mexican Loteria cards before each vignette. Loteria is similiar to bingo, except that images are used instead of numbers. The dealer sings a riddle for each image, and the players cover the images. The Loteria card "La Rosa" is on the cover of the book.
Refusing to speak, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo is in a home run by the state after some tragic events. She is looking at her Loteria cards and writing in a journal. Each card seems to spark a memory about her life. She and her Mexican-American family live in Texas a few hours north of the Mexican border. While there were happy times and love in her life, the family members were victims of many violent outbursts and abuse as well.
For the Loteria card "La Botella" (the bottle), Luz writes about her father, "I just wanted to know where it came from, to figure out why he did what he did because it wasn't coming from him. It was coming from that man in the bottle, Don Pedro." This is the story of a complex family situation seen through the eyes of a young girl who still remains devoted to her father. Luz is too young to completely process all the family has gone through, and to understand what is "normal" behavior in a family. Her father himself was a victim of an abusive father.
There are many Spanish phrases throughout the book. Although I only know a few Spanish words, the meanings of many of the phrases could be understood because of the context. But translations of the Spanish words would have been helpful.
The author was a contemporary ballet dancer for seventeen years before turning to a new career in writing. Loteria is his first novel.
Refusing to speak, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo is in a home run by the state after some tragic events. She is looking at her Loteria cards and writing in a journal. Each card seems to spark a memory about her life. She and her Mexican-American family live in Texas a few hours north of the Mexican border. While there were happy times and love in her life, the family members were victims of many violent outbursts and abuse as well.
For the Loteria card "La Botella" (the bottle), Luz writes about her father, "I just wanted to know where it came from, to figure out why he did what he did because it wasn't coming from him. It was coming from that man in the bottle, Don Pedro." This is the story of a complex family situation seen through the eyes of a young girl who still remains devoted to her father. Luz is too young to completely process all the family has gone through, and to understand what is "normal" behavior in a family. Her father himself was a victim of an abusive father.
There are many Spanish phrases throughout the book. Although I only know a few Spanish words, the meanings of many of the phrases could be understood because of the context. But translations of the Spanish words would have been helpful.
The author was a contemporary ballet dancer for seventeen years before turning to a new career in writing. Loteria is his first novel.
September 19, 2013
At first, I thought, "Wow! a Spanish author who is an acclaimed ballet dancer and an Iowa Arts Fellow!! Oh! I can't wait to see what his book is about. OH... LOTERIA ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE BOOK?! I DIE!!"
Until I read the book and realized the ADULT SPANISH MALE author is writing about the CHICANO experience from an 11-YEAR-OLD GIRL'S POV. He doesn't pull it off.
Domestic abuse, loteria, and first-generation americanism are all things I can relate to, and I'm not buying it.
And waking up in a rehabilitation facility/institution refusing to acknowledge why you got there? ALREADY BEEN DONE: Benjamin Alire Saenz did it way better with Last Night I Sang To The Monster. AND it actually evoked an emotional response from me- deep, heart-wrenching sobs. I suspect Zambrano tried to evoke the same response from his readers with Loteria.... and missed. And missed.
I am sorely disappointed by "this story", because, I already know it and have lived it. My Mexican-American friends and family have lived it too.
And they could have all told the story better.
Maybe you should stick to dancing, Zambrano?
ONE STAR for the actual physical design of the book.
Until I read the book and realized the ADULT SPANISH MALE author is writing about the CHICANO experience from an 11-YEAR-OLD GIRL'S POV. He doesn't pull it off.
Domestic abuse, loteria, and first-generation americanism are all things I can relate to, and I'm not buying it.
And waking up in a rehabilitation facility/institution refusing to acknowledge why you got there? ALREADY BEEN DONE: Benjamin Alire Saenz did it way better with Last Night I Sang To The Monster. AND it actually evoked an emotional response from me- deep, heart-wrenching sobs. I suspect Zambrano tried to evoke the same response from his readers with Loteria.... and missed. And missed.
I am sorely disappointed by "this story", because, I already know it and have lived it. My Mexican-American friends and family have lived it too.
And they could have all told the story better.
Maybe you should stick to dancing, Zambrano?
ONE STAR for the actual physical design of the book.
August 28, 2013
I heard about this book on NPR and it sounded intriguing. The book itself is very beautiful, with colorful illustrations of the Loteria cards. But packaging isn't enough to save this book. I kept waiting for it to take some sort of direction. The prose is okay, but the vignettes following each card started to feel very contrived, like a gimmick instead of really being intrinsic to the storytelling. It holds off on what is supposed to be the powerful stuff too long and by then I was just bored and not at all interested in the narrator or the characters, who are too thinly sketched to care about. And I wasn't really convinced by this little girl's voice. It felt like a man writing a little girl, which I guess is what it was. I read this book in a day, mostly because the chapters are so short and there's a lot of white space in this book, and there were no passages really worth reflecting over. Disappointing.
October 21, 2014
First, let me confess: I was attracted to this book because of its cover, nothing more. I didn't hear someone falling over themselves praising it on the radio or anything. The striking depiction of a loteria card featuring a rose caught my eye on the Choice Reads shelf at the library. Upon reading the premise (a series of vignettes based upon each card) I'd decided to give this a go.
Before I go into detail about what is so very wrong with this book, let me give it credit where it is due: Loteria was a very quick read. I finished it in one night, in part because the vignettes mentioned were very short - which I ate up like potato chips, only to get an emotional stomachache from the (unsatisfying, aggravating, idiotic) ending that I unknowingly raced toward.
Let me quote Wendell Ricketts (another reviewer of this book) because he eloquently described some things that I had trouble putting my finger on.
"Luz’s deeply wounded voice quickly begins to grate: for its self-consciousness, for its canny ability to conceal then reveal the brutal detail with studied timing, for its acute awareness of its sustained note of injured innocence." In, say, House on Mango Street, this childlike voice works for a number of reasons because that work has a number of other qualities which redeem it. In this book, however, such a voice ends up oddly adult in a way that feels ever-so-slightly contrived, perhaps best illustrated by the way in which, at the end of one chapter, she describes herself and her sister as "a statue of two girls trying to do the right thing." Her voice, instead of conveying anything resembling the thoughts an actual 11 year old girl, rings of "Older Male Author Imitating What He Thinks an 11 Year Old Girl Would Say" and which ultimately felt.... off.
I want to dress my review up with all sorts of fancy literary explanations of why this book was not well written, but the fact is I just don't like Luz. I don't like the decisions she makes (past and present) and I don't like the way she acts.
I don't like the way it feels as if Luz purposefully tells these intensely tragic things about her life but then at the same time appears to not give two shits about any of it. One could argue that that's just the way abused children can behave, but I didn't relate to her palpable neutrality to her horrors, her thick thick mask that never once cracks. I longed to see a spark somewhere in Luz, really I did. Some flame of her-ness that would serve a defiant shout to all of it. There was nothing. Incidentally, the only character who does volunteer that spark, who tries to call a spade a spade - Estrella - is the one who dies.
And after all is said and done, all the family counselling that steadfastly does NOT happen, Luz apparently chooses to wait for her father to get out of jail so that she may live with him again. I bleakly interpret such an ending to be a reminder of the futility of escaping one's toxic, toxic culture. I wanted to scream, HE'S THE ONE WHO BLAMED YOU FOR BEING SEXUALLY ABUSED! BUT HE'S THE ONE WHO BEAT OVER AND OVER! DO YOU HAVE A HUGE DEATH WISH?? DO YOU THINK HE IS NOT GOING TO BLAME YOU?? Apparently Luz doesn't give two shits about this either. Her attitude is clear in the way she almost makes the decision to go live in Mexico despite repeatedly refusing to speak Spanish throughout the whole book.
I admit that there were points of luminous beauty that shone at times in the book. I appreciate that Luz's father appears broken rather than evil (not all authors can show this.) Zambrano colorfully details this awkward loteria card world of his in all the way that he knows how, which, for a first-time author, is alright.
But when it comes to those moments of "look at this cultural sorrow" marked throughout the book, I'd like to volunteer another quote of Wendell's here. At times I really felt as if Zambrano "...seems to be standing eternally at the reader’s shoulder, whispering 'Isn’t this dreadful? And yet, isn't it poetic? Isn’t it colorful and so very authentically Mexican? Isn’t it beautifully sad?'"
Well, Zambrano, what's more sad is that there also is no redemption for any of these miserable people that I'd read about for the past couple of hours. Congratulations, Luz, you're well on your way to be one of those miserable adults who stuffs your feelings into your back pocket and then wonder why you have bruises and hate your life.
At least the obligatory pedophile cousin's hand gets blown off.
Before I go into detail about what is so very wrong with this book, let me give it credit where it is due: Loteria was a very quick read. I finished it in one night, in part because the vignettes mentioned were very short - which I ate up like potato chips, only to get an emotional stomachache from the (unsatisfying, aggravating, idiotic) ending that I unknowingly raced toward.
Let me quote Wendell Ricketts (another reviewer of this book) because he eloquently described some things that I had trouble putting my finger on.
"Luz’s deeply wounded voice quickly begins to grate: for its self-consciousness, for its canny ability to conceal then reveal the brutal detail with studied timing, for its acute awareness of its sustained note of injured innocence." In, say, House on Mango Street, this childlike voice works for a number of reasons because that work has a number of other qualities which redeem it. In this book, however, such a voice ends up oddly adult in a way that feels ever-so-slightly contrived, perhaps best illustrated by the way in which, at the end of one chapter, she describes herself and her sister as "a statue of two girls trying to do the right thing." Her voice, instead of conveying anything resembling the thoughts an actual 11 year old girl, rings of "Older Male Author Imitating What He Thinks an 11 Year Old Girl Would Say" and which ultimately felt.... off.
I want to dress my review up with all sorts of fancy literary explanations of why this book was not well written, but the fact is I just don't like Luz. I don't like the decisions she makes (past and present) and I don't like the way she acts.
I don't like the way it feels as if Luz purposefully tells these intensely tragic things about her life but then at the same time appears to not give two shits about any of it. One could argue that that's just the way abused children can behave, but I didn't relate to her palpable neutrality to her horrors, her thick thick mask that never once cracks. I longed to see a spark somewhere in Luz, really I did. Some flame of her-ness that would serve a defiant shout to all of it. There was nothing. Incidentally, the only character who does volunteer that spark, who tries to call a spade a spade - Estrella - is the one who dies.
And after all is said and done, all the family counselling that steadfastly does NOT happen, Luz apparently chooses to wait for her father to get out of jail so that she may live with him again. I bleakly interpret such an ending to be a reminder of the futility of escaping one's toxic, toxic culture. I wanted to scream, HE'S THE ONE WHO BLAMED YOU FOR BEING SEXUALLY ABUSED! BUT HE'S THE ONE WHO BEAT OVER AND OVER! DO YOU HAVE A HUGE DEATH WISH?? DO YOU THINK HE IS NOT GOING TO BLAME YOU?? Apparently Luz doesn't give two shits about this either. Her attitude is clear in the way she almost makes the decision to go live in Mexico despite repeatedly refusing to speak Spanish throughout the whole book.
I admit that there were points of luminous beauty that shone at times in the book. I appreciate that Luz's father appears broken rather than evil (not all authors can show this.) Zambrano colorfully details this awkward loteria card world of his in all the way that he knows how, which, for a first-time author, is alright.
But when it comes to those moments of "look at this cultural sorrow" marked throughout the book, I'd like to volunteer another quote of Wendell's here. At times I really felt as if Zambrano "...seems to be standing eternally at the reader’s shoulder, whispering 'Isn’t this dreadful? And yet, isn't it poetic? Isn’t it colorful and so very authentically Mexican? Isn’t it beautifully sad?'"
Well, Zambrano, what's more sad is that there also is no redemption for any of these miserable people that I'd read about for the past couple of hours. Congratulations, Luz, you're well on your way to be one of those miserable adults who stuffs your feelings into your back pocket and then wonder why you have bruises and hate your life.
At least the obligatory pedophile cousin's hand gets blown off.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 12, 2024
i would rather play lotería blind while my brother throws loose change at me than read this again
October 27, 2019
Loteria is a Mexican game a lot like Bingo. I had high expectations from this book about a 11 year old Mexican american girl ward of the state. It is a short readable story yet I cant really say that I liked it. I am not Mexican however I was bothered by quite a few cliches like the references to Selena and an alcoholic father. I wanted to love this book but in the end I just didnt hate it but I didnt like it either.
July 16, 2013
Mario Alberto Zambrano's debut novel achieves the tone that is both the hardest to strike in fiction and the most effective: quiet devastation. LOTERIA is the story of 11-year-old Luz trying to sort through her complex, damaged emotions in the fallout of a family tragedy by shuffling through a deck of Loteria cards--the Mexican game of chance. Of course, being so young, Luz is not fully equipped to negotiate such difficult emotional terrain, or articulate her own sense of loss. And yet the reader sees it fully. That is Zambrano's greatest achievement: not once during this novel did I feel I wasn't reading the words of an 11-year-old girl, and yet I was able to see so much about her that she couldn't see herself. The author has successfully created the illusion of a human soul on the page, which is the job of fiction. I found myself mourning for Luz precisely because she was unable to mourn for herself. LOTERIA left me with some bruises, which is all I ask of a good book.
Read
May 11, 2017A sad tale told through the eyes of Luz Castillo, a girl who stopped talking due to trauma. The reader receives little snapshots of her experience through a deck of Loteria cards. Loteria is a sort of Mexican Bingo game her family played often. True to how memory works, as Luz goes through the cards in the deck, her past stories come to life and connect, offering Luz the purest therapy of reliving past experiences leading up to the one that has damaged her so.
-Lisanne E.
-Lisanne E.
September 13, 2015
2.5**
Eleven-year-old Luz Castillo sits and deals the cards of her Lotería deck. She is in the custody of the state, and cannot (or will not) speak about what she has seen and done in her short childhood. But each card in the deck leads to a memory, and she writes her thoughts in the notebook her Aunt Tencha gave her.
This is a tragic story born of crushed hopes and poverty, and resulting in alcohol abuse, and violence. That there are children living in these circumstances is disturbing, and all too real. That they find any happiness and joy is a testament to the resilient human spirit. But most of Luz’s memories are far from happy. She has seen far too much for her young age, and hasn’t the maturity to understand or cope with the aftermath.
I really wanted to love this book. There is great promise in this idea for a novel, and there were some scenes where I saw the writer Zambrano may become. But Zambrano doesn’t give me a believable 11-year-old Luz. I know that children brought up in these circumstances gain vocabulary and behaviors that are not those of a white, suburban child. But somehow her voice just didn’t ring true to me. I kept hearing the male author telling the story, rather than the girl.
Still, it’s a powerful story and I’m glad I read it.
The book itself is a work of art, with beautiful full-color recreations of the Lotería cards at the beginning of each chapter. They brought back many fond memories of numerous games played with my grandmother and cousins.
Eleven-year-old Luz Castillo sits and deals the cards of her Lotería deck. She is in the custody of the state, and cannot (or will not) speak about what she has seen and done in her short childhood. But each card in the deck leads to a memory, and she writes her thoughts in the notebook her Aunt Tencha gave her.
This is a tragic story born of crushed hopes and poverty, and resulting in alcohol abuse, and violence. That there are children living in these circumstances is disturbing, and all too real. That they find any happiness and joy is a testament to the resilient human spirit. But most of Luz’s memories are far from happy. She has seen far too much for her young age, and hasn’t the maturity to understand or cope with the aftermath.
I really wanted to love this book. There is great promise in this idea for a novel, and there were some scenes where I saw the writer Zambrano may become. But Zambrano doesn’t give me a believable 11-year-old Luz. I know that children brought up in these circumstances gain vocabulary and behaviors that are not those of a white, suburban child. But somehow her voice just didn’t ring true to me. I kept hearing the male author telling the story, rather than the girl.
Still, it’s a powerful story and I’m glad I read it.
The book itself is a work of art, with beautiful full-color recreations of the Lotería cards at the beginning of each chapter. They brought back many fond memories of numerous games played with my grandmother and cousins.
July 12, 2013
First let me tell you what this wonderful little book looks like. It is about 9 x 6 in. and it is hardbound, no book jacket and on the front surrounded by a background of blue, there is a lovely red rose. The pages are thicker, so they do not tear easily. Loteria itself, is a Mexican game that is played somewhat like Bingo but using colorful cards and riddles and different patterns. Each chapter had a page with the picture of the card in beautiful colors. The presentation of this book is fantastic.
Luz is eleven yrs. old when we meet her, she is being held in a type of juvenile home, where they have given her a journal and told her to write her story, since she will not speak about what has happened. She uses the cards to tell things good and bad, that have happened to and in her family. This story is not linear, she goes back and forth depending on what card she pulls. Eventually we learn what happened in her family. This is a frank and honest telling, from a young girls viewpoint about the things that needed to stay in her family. Family does not ever tell on family. The one card representing the bottle is especially poignant. As she says, "We tell our own stories. At the end she is offered a choice and although we now know what happened, there is still one big mystery in which the reader needs to furnish his own answer.
Very realistic, will appeal to readers of Jessamyn Ward and Bonnie Jo Campbell and other cultural writers.
Luz is eleven yrs. old when we meet her, she is being held in a type of juvenile home, where they have given her a journal and told her to write her story, since she will not speak about what has happened. She uses the cards to tell things good and bad, that have happened to and in her family. This story is not linear, she goes back and forth depending on what card she pulls. Eventually we learn what happened in her family. This is a frank and honest telling, from a young girls viewpoint about the things that needed to stay in her family. Family does not ever tell on family. The one card representing the bottle is especially poignant. As she says, "We tell our own stories. At the end she is offered a choice and although we now know what happened, there is still one big mystery in which the reader needs to furnish his own answer.
Very realistic, will appeal to readers of Jessamyn Ward and Bonnie Jo Campbell and other cultural writers.
August 7, 2013
The premise of this sophomoric mess is "Loteria," a bingo-like Mexican card game with a different image on each card, each image also carrying a riddle with it. Each chapter of this novel shows a card whose image reveals a new riddle in the story. There is one card missing which supposedly reveals the secret of what has been hidden all along, which is not worth the reader's effort, to say the least. I think the hidden image, or missing card, should be "la pistola" so that the reader can shoot himself after finishing this awful novel, and put himself out of his misery. I endured a gushing interview on NPR where the book reviewer was falling over herself with praise, most likely because she could not understand all the Spanish parts and had to pretend she "got it." LAME!!!
September 7, 2021
A nice short and extremely depressing read🙂
July 20, 2013
I absolutely loved this book. It made me so nostalgic for many of the things mentioned in the book. It felt like an old friend reminiscing with me about the past. I thrilled at things that the author mentioned within the story that made me want to say outloud "I remember that!" "I used to do that too!" Here too was another memorable protagonist that will live in my heart for a very long time. The book is beautifully presented with each chapter showing an actual picture of a card from the Loteria. This made me want to go look for my own game set.
The story is told through the eyes of an 11 year old who's just been taken into custody of the state for some bad stuff that's happened in her family. Luz tells the story through a series of snippets of memories that are evoked by each card in a famous Mexican card game, Loteria. But this is not what I would call children's fiction. It is written for adults. It is very straightforward, but Luz never loses her child's voice. You don't for one minute forget that this is an 11 year telling us about some bad events that happened to her and her family. For all the bad things that may have happened to her though, you also read about many tender and funny moments that her family has gone through. You see a family who loves each other but also has a hard time expressing it; a family who has many flaws to work through but ultimately falls victim to them.
The story is read-between-the-lines at times but I was actually glad for this. I fell in love with Luz and I suppose my maternal instincts took over. I didn't want to read in explicit detail what could have happened in her family. I just wanted to protect her and hope that in the end everything would turn out ok for her.
I cannot recommend this book enough and I look forward to reading more books by this author. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.
The story is told through the eyes of an 11 year old who's just been taken into custody of the state for some bad stuff that's happened in her family. Luz tells the story through a series of snippets of memories that are evoked by each card in a famous Mexican card game, Loteria. But this is not what I would call children's fiction. It is written for adults. It is very straightforward, but Luz never loses her child's voice. You don't for one minute forget that this is an 11 year telling us about some bad events that happened to her and her family. For all the bad things that may have happened to her though, you also read about many tender and funny moments that her family has gone through. You see a family who loves each other but also has a hard time expressing it; a family who has many flaws to work through but ultimately falls victim to them.
The story is read-between-the-lines at times but I was actually glad for this. I fell in love with Luz and I suppose my maternal instincts took over. I didn't want to read in explicit detail what could have happened in her family. I just wanted to protect her and hope that in the end everything would turn out ok for her.
I cannot recommend this book enough and I look forward to reading more books by this author. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.
July 4, 2013
This is a powerful little book. I must admit that I think it was a bit over my head - it involves the slowly revealed tale of young Luz Castillo, currently in the custody of child protective services. Why? The reader doesn't know yet - Luz refuses to talk. The bits and pieces of her life with her father, mother, sister and aunt are slowly told through her journal entries with the use of Loteria cards - a Mexican bingo type game.
Each chapter (and I use that term very loosely as some are mere paragraphs long) is introduced with one of the cards and Luz writes a bit about her life. The story is told through the eyes and thoughts of this 11 year old girl and the reader soon learns the horror of her life in a very abusive household. Her parents came to the US from Mexico to find a better life but they did not find it. The story Luz writes is rife with alcohol, tradition and her Catholic upbringing.
There is a fair bit of Spanish used within the story - some can be gleaned from context but without a knowledge of the language (mine is minimal - I took it in college) there is some googling to do to try and maintain the storyline.
The reader does feel a touch lost at first - at least I did as you just don't know what is going on. You are given bits of information that you need remember as each card is revealed. It all comes together in a very troubling story with an ending that I didn't see coming. Despite my feeling that a lot of things were over my head it was a book that caused me much thought and one I'll keep to perhaps read again. I suspect that I might sort more out upon a second reading when I'm knowledgeable of the outcome and I can then better understand the beginnings.
It's not a long read by any stretch of the imagination but it is most assuredly a thought provoking one.
4.5
Each chapter (and I use that term very loosely as some are mere paragraphs long) is introduced with one of the cards and Luz writes a bit about her life. The story is told through the eyes and thoughts of this 11 year old girl and the reader soon learns the horror of her life in a very abusive household. Her parents came to the US from Mexico to find a better life but they did not find it. The story Luz writes is rife with alcohol, tradition and her Catholic upbringing.
There is a fair bit of Spanish used within the story - some can be gleaned from context but without a knowledge of the language (mine is minimal - I took it in college) there is some googling to do to try and maintain the storyline.
The reader does feel a touch lost at first - at least I did as you just don't know what is going on. You are given bits of information that you need remember as each card is revealed. It all comes together in a very troubling story with an ending that I didn't see coming. Despite my feeling that a lot of things were over my head it was a book that caused me much thought and one I'll keep to perhaps read again. I suspect that I might sort more out upon a second reading when I'm knowledgeable of the outcome and I can then better understand the beginnings.
It's not a long read by any stretch of the imagination but it is most assuredly a thought provoking one.
4.5
May 28, 2013
Luz Maria Castillo is eleven years old and she is a ward of the state. She has been placed in a facility that houses young people because of some unknown reason. We do know, however, that her father is in jail and that her mother has run away several years ago. She has a sister Estrella and an aunt Tencha. Her aunt visits her frequently but Luz has not spoken since she has been placed in custody.
She is using a deck of Loteria cards, a Mexican game similar to bingo, to write her family's story. Each card gives the reader a little bit more information about Luz's situation and the tragic incidents that have brought her to her current circumstances. We learn about the domestic violence that occurred with regularity in Luz's home, how her hand was broken by her father in response to his finding out that Luz was sexually abused, how Luz's mother and father often fought physically with one another.
The book moves very slowly and some of the Loteria cards don't seem to shed much light on Luz's situation. Luz is writing a journal, speaking in words to a higher power, about her family and her life. She is visited by a social worker named Julia who tries to get her to talk, without success. I wanted to learn more about Luz's current situation. Much of the back history did not seem to be relevant to Luz's current life. Overall, this book is more like a novella than a novel. It has 272 pages but approximately 70 of them are illustrations of the Loteria cards or blank pages. Parts of it rambled as Luz used the cards to try and come up with something about her life without much success.
The ending is a huge surprise and has another twist as well. I appreciated the parts about Luz's family but felt like much of the book was filler rather than relevant to the topic at hand.
She is using a deck of Loteria cards, a Mexican game similar to bingo, to write her family's story. Each card gives the reader a little bit more information about Luz's situation and the tragic incidents that have brought her to her current circumstances. We learn about the domestic violence that occurred with regularity in Luz's home, how her hand was broken by her father in response to his finding out that Luz was sexually abused, how Luz's mother and father often fought physically with one another.
The book moves very slowly and some of the Loteria cards don't seem to shed much light on Luz's situation. Luz is writing a journal, speaking in words to a higher power, about her family and her life. She is visited by a social worker named Julia who tries to get her to talk, without success. I wanted to learn more about Luz's current situation. Much of the back history did not seem to be relevant to Luz's current life. Overall, this book is more like a novella than a novel. It has 272 pages but approximately 70 of them are illustrations of the Loteria cards or blank pages. Parts of it rambled as Luz used the cards to try and come up with something about her life without much success.
The ending is a huge surprise and has another twist as well. I appreciated the parts about Luz's family but felt like much of the book was filler rather than relevant to the topic at hand.
February 8, 2023
Ten years ago, I put this book on my “ to read“ list. I don’t read a book unless I can get it for free. So this means I am an avid reader of books from the library, or I try to get free copies from the publisher. But my library didn’t purchase this book for many years. A decade has passed since its first publication, and I am quite curious why my library has decided now to purchase the book rather than when the book 1st came out.
But this book is definitely worth the wait.
Zambrano knows how to capture the compounding effect of violence and abuse. The abused becomes an abuser, and the children who witness the abuse take their first steps along the same path as their abusive parents.
Estrella gets hit by her father, and Luz offers the explanation that Estrella wouldn’t get hit if she wouldn’t do things to make her father hit her. Luz also has a broken wrist from her father’s abuse.
Zambrano does not moralize. He simply puts on the pages of his short story the way abuse can be both violent and casual. Internalized and resisted at the same time.
I’ve read some of the negative reviews, and after reading this book, I genuinely don’t understand how this book receives anything less than five stars.
But this book is definitely worth the wait.
Zambrano knows how to capture the compounding effect of violence and abuse. The abused becomes an abuser, and the children who witness the abuse take their first steps along the same path as their abusive parents.
Estrella gets hit by her father, and Luz offers the explanation that Estrella wouldn’t get hit if she wouldn’t do things to make her father hit her. Luz also has a broken wrist from her father’s abuse.
Zambrano does not moralize. He simply puts on the pages of his short story the way abuse can be both violent and casual. Internalized and resisted at the same time.
I’ve read some of the negative reviews, and after reading this book, I genuinely don’t understand how this book receives anything less than five stars.
December 13, 2015
I was going to give this book three stars originally because I am not so sure the narrative conceit of Loteria worked (what pre-teen, having experienced tragedy, would structure the telling of her story in personal journals based on a deck of cards?). Also, the voice in this story, while beautiful, is sometimes far too mature to be accurately eleven years old. Any frustration I felt with this book was all in its stylistic choices.
That being said, I am in a generous mood and really wanted to give credit to the slow burn, kick right to the feels that this book delivers after its middle. Zambrano has created complex characters in Loteria, people who make horrible choices or behave stupidly and hurt each other, but who still somehow feel worthy of compassion. It would be very easy for this story to collapse into one dimensional melodrama and in my opinion, it never did.
That being said, I am in a generous mood and really wanted to give credit to the slow burn, kick right to the feels that this book delivers after its middle. Zambrano has created complex characters in Loteria, people who make horrible choices or behave stupidly and hurt each other, but who still somehow feel worthy of compassion. It would be very easy for this story to collapse into one dimensional melodrama and in my opinion, it never did.
August 8, 2013
I have to start by raving about how beautiful this book is. The feel of the book itself and its cover, the gorgeous illustrations by Jarrod Taylor, the thickness and heaviness of the pages, even its size - you can tell that this book was designed with the utmost care. It gives testament to just how much (so, so much) went into the crafting of the story itself, which is both heartbreaking and hopeful. I especially loved how the journal entries were written using the Loteria cards - entries written as the images on the cards evoked memories, rather than in the more perfunctory linear timeline. It muddies up the waters a bit, which is so much more true to the way life and memory work.
August 26, 2019
The prose of this book, the lived-in language of calling someone “you stupid” and the Spanglish resonate so deeply and accurately in this story of a TexMex family. The story unfolds as each chapter is a journal entry inspired by a Lotería card. What originally seems like a gimmick quickly changes form. The journal entries are memories and snapshots and entire stories. The interplay between this Mexican family unit and the outside world, between cultura and America, between what we want family to be and what it actually is, between love and abuse - are devastatingly and beautifully unfolded through the eyes of an 11 year old girl. Both easy and tough to read, I highly recommend it.
March 9, 2022
I love the loteria game and that’s why I was drawn to this book but it was triggering for me and just tragic the entire way through. At the halfway mark, I almost just stopped but I wanted to know what happened to Luz and Estrella, and especially the mom, and yet the depressing story just hums along with no satisfying ending. I agree with other reviews — it’s obviously a Spanish man writing in a supposedly 11 year old Mexican American girl’s voice and it felt really colonizer-gross to me. I’m sad to have disliked this so much!
December 23, 2021
Not sure what to say about this book. It took me quite a while to get through it and I am not sure why I forced myself to complete it. The writing is all over the place as is the plot/story. I got to the very last chapter, if you can call it that and still am not sure what happened in this book.
I give it 2 stars because it is a book, written by someone who managed to get it published and that alone deserves 2 stars.
Really can't recommend.
July 6, 2013
I loved this book. It was beautifully written and so creative. This was a favorite childhood game and one I still play with my children. I enjoyed how the author weaved the story and the game together. I gave it 5 stars instead of 4.5 because of the way it spoke to me personally. Some parts of the story were all too familiar to me.
December 31, 2023
Absolutely beautiful cover, which is what drew me in initially but the story missed the mark. I started this last night when I couldn’t sleep and was able to read it quickly as the chapters were short. The cards didn’t always correlate with the chapter that followed and the story was… unfortunately not that great. I’m bummed this was the last book I read in 2023 but maybe I’ll try to start and finish a different one. I can’t end 2023 like this!
July 10, 2013
It is slowly revealed what has happened to eleven-year-old Luz María Castillo and her family through diary entries she makes based on Loteria cards she draws from a deck in Mario Alberto Zambrano's debut novel Loteria. This is a tragic story told through the memories and in the voice of a young girl. The 53 chapters all open with the picture of a different Lotaria card. Luz is talking to God in her diary entries, as she contemplates her memories of her family. She is in state custody and not talking to anyone about her family. Very slowly the dynamics of her violent, dysfunctional family are reveal and we learn what was happening.
The chapters are short and the memories Luz shares are not all synchronous, but instead are recollected fragments of various family events and occasions from her lifetme. We learn about her father's drinking, the violence in her family, but the full extent of these occurrences isn’t revealed all at once. At the beginning we know something bad has happened, after all Luz is in state custody and not talking to anyone, but the total picture isn't revealed until much later.
Luz says of a counselor "Then she looks at me like I'm one of those stories you hear about on the ten o’çlock news."(pg. 3)
Later, when Luz writes, "She wouldn't know what it was like. We all fought. We all hit each other."(pg. 16) we begin to understand that this isn't going to be an easy story.
At the beginning of the novel you may feel a bit of disconnect with the story simply because you don't have even a partial picture of what is going on, but stay with it. Luz lets us know that she's cautious and not speaking to anyone when she says,"I keep my mouth shut because I don't know the rules of the game."(pg. 17) As she deals out the Lotaria cards for her own private game and writes about her life in her diary/journal, we understand the environment of violence and alcoholism that gave birth to her cautious nature.
The narrative, in English, also contains many Spanish phrases and sentences that are smoothly incorporated into the text. Since the Loteria cards are pictured in the book, it really is a much shorter novel than the page numbers would indicate. Zambrano has done an excellent job capturing the voice of this eleven year old girl in epistolary form while exploring the dark side of a very dysfunctional family.
Highly recommended
Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher and TLC for review purposes.
The chapters are short and the memories Luz shares are not all synchronous, but instead are recollected fragments of various family events and occasions from her lifetme. We learn about her father's drinking, the violence in her family, but the full extent of these occurrences isn’t revealed all at once. At the beginning we know something bad has happened, after all Luz is in state custody and not talking to anyone, but the total picture isn't revealed until much later.
Luz says of a counselor "Then she looks at me like I'm one of those stories you hear about on the ten o’çlock news."(pg. 3)
Later, when Luz writes, "She wouldn't know what it was like. We all fought. We all hit each other."(pg. 16) we begin to understand that this isn't going to be an easy story.
At the beginning of the novel you may feel a bit of disconnect with the story simply because you don't have even a partial picture of what is going on, but stay with it. Luz lets us know that she's cautious and not speaking to anyone when she says,"I keep my mouth shut because I don't know the rules of the game."(pg. 17) As she deals out the Lotaria cards for her own private game and writes about her life in her diary/journal, we understand the environment of violence and alcoholism that gave birth to her cautious nature.
The narrative, in English, also contains many Spanish phrases and sentences that are smoothly incorporated into the text. Since the Loteria cards are pictured in the book, it really is a much shorter novel than the page numbers would indicate. Zambrano has done an excellent job capturing the voice of this eleven year old girl in epistolary form while exploring the dark side of a very dysfunctional family.
Highly recommended
Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher and TLC for review purposes.
July 12, 2013
3.5/5
This is such an interesting concept but I'm not entirely certain how I feel about the story. Luz is in the custody of the state of Texas, her sister Estrella in a coma. Her father has been arrested and her aunt Tencha encourages her to write her thoughts in a journal. Luz has not spoken since her father was arrested. Each chapter is a very short journal entry with her memories prompted by a card from the Lotería game. Her thoughts are directed to God.
As Luz recalls her life, what becomes obvious is the fact that her father is jealous and an abusive drunk. But abuse isn't the only dysfunction in their household. The children occasionally drink as well, they watch mature television and their life as immigrants is neither comfortable nor stable. So, their home life is far from normal but what you find through her journal is that Luz doesn't understand what's acceptable and what is not. Because of her upbringing she often behaves in strange and shocking ways.
"The abused become abusers" rang through my head, as I read this book. Luz has been exposed to horrible scenes and abused but has shrugged off her experiences, remaining devoted to her abusive father. What will become of a child who has experienced such horror and acts out from a place in her mind where anger and pain are the norm?
There are some unanswered questions at the end of the book. You know from her reflections that there was a mother but she's no longer around. Did she leave willingly? Is she nearby? Did she return to Mexico or did something else happen to her?
There are a lot of Spanish words and phrases in Lotería. That was only occasionally a problem for me. Some were translated immediately and others were made obvious through context. But, plenty went over my head and I didn't have my iPad handy while I was reading to look up translations (it's a very quick read). I may have missed out on some subtleties.
Because I wasn't entirely sure what happened to the mother and wanted answers, this book falls between "liked it" and "really liked it". I thought it was paced beautifully until I got close to the end and those missing explanations became solidified. In spite of not feeling a sense of completion, I thought Lotería was a pretty powerful story of abuse and its aftermath.
This is such an interesting concept but I'm not entirely certain how I feel about the story. Luz is in the custody of the state of Texas, her sister Estrella in a coma. Her father has been arrested and her aunt Tencha encourages her to write her thoughts in a journal. Luz has not spoken since her father was arrested. Each chapter is a very short journal entry with her memories prompted by a card from the Lotería game. Her thoughts are directed to God.
As Luz recalls her life, what becomes obvious is the fact that her father is jealous and an abusive drunk. But abuse isn't the only dysfunction in their household. The children occasionally drink as well, they watch mature television and their life as immigrants is neither comfortable nor stable. So, their home life is far from normal but what you find through her journal is that Luz doesn't understand what's acceptable and what is not. Because of her upbringing she often behaves in strange and shocking ways.
"The abused become abusers" rang through my head, as I read this book. Luz has been exposed to horrible scenes and abused but has shrugged off her experiences, remaining devoted to her abusive father. What will become of a child who has experienced such horror and acts out from a place in her mind where anger and pain are the norm?
There are some unanswered questions at the end of the book. You know from her reflections that there was a mother but she's no longer around. Did she leave willingly? Is she nearby? Did she return to Mexico or did something else happen to her?
There are a lot of Spanish words and phrases in Lotería. That was only occasionally a problem for me. Some were translated immediately and others were made obvious through context. But, plenty went over my head and I didn't have my iPad handy while I was reading to look up translations (it's a very quick read). I may have missed out on some subtleties.
Because I wasn't entirely sure what happened to the mother and wanted answers, this book falls between "liked it" and "really liked it". I thought it was paced beautifully until I got close to the end and those missing explanations became solidified. In spite of not feeling a sense of completion, I thought Lotería was a pretty powerful story of abuse and its aftermath.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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