The National Latinos Writers Conference and the History & Literary program of the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) have recognized Patricia Santana as the winner of the 2008 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize for her novel, Ghosts of El Grullo. A national literary award established to encourage and reward emerging Chicana and Chicano authors, the Premio Aztlán was founded by renowned author Rudolfo Anaya and his wife Patricia in 1993.
As winner of the Premio Aztlán, Santana receives $1,000 and will give a public lecture during the National Latinos Writers Conference, held at the NHCC in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 21-23, 2009.
In Ghosts of El Grullo, Yolanda Sahagún is a clever young woman who finds the symbolism in life’s smallest acts and events. She escapes into the world of literature—The Canterbury Tales or stories from Mexican countryman Juan Rulfo—when family dramas heat up, and they often do in a household of nine children overseen by an erratic father and a mother almost too sweet to be true.
Yolanda strives to shape her own identity: as a scholarship honoree at a Daughters of the American Revolution tea party in La Jolla, Yolanda feels out of place until her mother Dolores captivates even the stuffiest ladies with her family stories from the Mexican Revolution. The drive back to their little house in a Palm City immigrant neighborhood where eleven people share one bathroom reminds Yolanda of just how different her life is from the high society ladies of La Jolla and later, from her college peers at UC-San Diego.
When Dolores dies of gallbladder cancer during her freshman year of college, Yolanda’s struggles reach greater magnitudes as her father decides to sell their family home and she and her
sisters must care for the younger Sahagúns. She travels to El Grullo, Jalisco, the Mexican village where her parents grew up, and there her subconscious mingles with the ghosts of her family’s past as Yolanda searches for answers and a path from which to navigate family, love, and her higher education.
Patricia Santana is chair of the foreign languages department and professor of Spanish at Cuyamaca College in El Cajon, California. Her book Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (UNM Press) won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and was an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Ghosts of El Grullo is a sequel to Patricia Santana’s critically acclaimed first novel Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility.
Connie Gotsch www.conniegotsch.com Host Write On Four Corners KSJE FM, Farmington NM www.ksje.com Author two award winning novels Snap Me a Future and A Mouthful of Shell available www.dlsijpress.com
Always in Print ‘Cuz They’re Print on Demand!
Coming in 2009, Belle’s Star,’ a youth novel from Artemesia Press at http://www.apbooks.net
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