How to Leave Hialeah

by Jennine Capó Crucet

Overview

United in their fierce sense of place and infused with the fading echoes of a lost homeland, the stories in Jennine Capó Crucet’s striking debut collection do for Miami what Edward P. Jones does for Washington, D.C., and what James Joyce did for Dublin: they expand our ideas and our expectations of the city by exposing its tough but vulnerable underbelly.

Crucet’s writing has been shaped by the people and landscapes of South Florida and by the stories of Cuba told by her parents and abuelos. Her own stories are informed by her experiences as a Cuban American woman living within and without her community, ready to leave and ready to return, “ready to mourn everything.”

Coming to us from the predominantly Hispanic working-class neighborhoods of Hialeah, the voices of this steamy section of Miami shout out to us from rowdy all-night funerals and kitchens full of plátanos and croquetas and lechón ribs, from domino tables and cigar factories, glitter-purple Buicks and handed-down Mom Rides, private homes of santeras and fights on front lawns. Calling to us from crowded expressways and canals underneath abandoned overpasses shading a city’s secrets, these voices are the heart of Miami, and in this award-winning collection Jennine Capó Crucet makes them sing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587298790
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Series:	John Simmons Short Fiction Award Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	184
File size:	463 KB

About the Author

Jennine Capó Crucet was born to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, the Southern Review, the Northwest Review, and other magazines. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Scholarship and has been a finalist for the Missouri Review Editors’ Prize and the University of California, Irvine, Chicano/Latino Literary Prize. A graduate of Cornell University, she currently lives and writes in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Contents Resurrection El Destino Hauling And in the Morning, Work The Next Move Animal Control Noche Buena Low Tide Men Who Punched Me in the Face Relapsing, Remitting Drift How to Leave Hialeah

Editorial Reviews

In this engrossing collection—sometimes intense, at other times darkly humorous—debut author Crucet portrays the daily challenges, heartbreak and family ties that penetrate Hialeah, a working-class Cuban-American neighborhood in Miami. In “El Destino Hauling,” a young girl pays witness to a night-long family funeral for a father who was run over by his son, perhaps by intent. “The Next Move” follows a grandfather left to struggle through the day without his wife while she's visiting family in Cuba. In “Men Who Punched Me in the Face,” a woman repeatedly drawn to abusive men convinces herself she enjoys being hit. A story set in the Cuban countryside finds a young woman struggling to make ends meet with just three prized possessions: a rooster, a bar of soap and Kotex maxi pads. Crucet details vividly the daily struggle that leads Cubans to prize their heritage above much else, but also illuminates a powerful need to escape the past. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

What a joy it is to read the work of a writer who has a powerful voice, a sense of humor, and a feeling for local histories. Jennine Capó Crucet’s stories start with Cuban American neighborhoods and cultures and then sail off into the direction of the great themes: love, familial bonds, aging, and death. And resurrection. This is a wonderful collection.”—Charles Baxter


“This is definitely a young writer to watch for, sassy, smart, with an unerring ear for a community’s voices, its losses, its over-the-top telenovela extravagances, and its poignant struggles to understand itself in a new land. I was glad not to have to leave Hialeah right away, but to stay long enough to hear its many stories as told by a gifted writer like Jennine Capó Crucet.”—Julia Alvarez, author, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Return to Sender


“Jennine Capó Crucet is an electrifying new talent—she’s funny, she’s smart, and she knows how to tell great stories. I fell in love with this terrific collection from the first paragraph, and I was still smitten on the last page.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, author, American Wife

From the Publisher