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| CrashBoomLove: A Novel in Verse | 
 enlarge | Author: Juan Felipe Herrera
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $1.76
You Save: $13.19 (88%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 971566
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 165
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.5
ISBN: 0826321143
EAN: 9780826321145
ASIN: 0826321143
Publication Date: September 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this novel in verse--unprecedented in Chicano literatureirenowned poet Juan Felipe Herrera illuminates the soul of a generation. Drawn from his own life as well as a lifetime of dedication to young people, CrashBoomLove helps readers understand what it is to be a teen, a migrant worker, and a boy wanting to be a boy. Sixteen-year-old Cisar Garcia is careening. His father, Papi Cisar, has left the migrant circuit in California for his other wife and children in Denver. Sweet Mama Lucy tries to provide for her son with dichos and tales of her own misspent youth. But at Rambling West High School in Fowlerville, the sides are drawn: Hmongs vs. Chicanos vs. everybody vs. Cisar, the new kid on the block. Precise and profound, CrashBoomLove will appeal to and resonate with high school readers across the country.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Realistic and well written January 17, 2004
This is a good story about a depressed teenaged boy. It's written like a poem through the entire book and it's really easy to understand. If you think you've got it bad, you should take a look at this guy's life.
 An interesting idea, with a mediocre story March 25, 2000
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This story tries to be touching, cool, alienated and uplifting, at all at once, but it just doesn't work. The poems are original in verse, but the story itself is depressing and stereotyped. Cesar's father has run off. Cesar is a delinquent in a ghetto school, ruining his life quickly. But then after the Bad Experiences that Turn His Life Around, he realizes The Truth of Things and decides to Walk the Straight and Narrow Path. Indeed the poems are fresh, and different, and quick to read. It's easy to have empathy for Ceasr's frustration. But the author makes the mistake of using tons of gang lingo and terms, which are explained -horrors!- by footnotes, as though this were a clinical study of a wild animal (the teenager). After a few chapters, the reader no longer feels as though he is taking a rare look inside of a rare mind, trapped in pitifully normal circumstances. Instead, it seems as though one is merely watching a documentary on a bad little boy who learns from his mistakes and Lives Happily Ever After. Don't read this book for insight into the delinquent lifestyle. The book almost furthers the idea that one can do many drugs, and yet still have a brilliant mind. The story never makes up its mind as to its position on the Bohemian lifestyle, and that is where it falls short. Instead of a parable, or a biography, this book remains merely a book of freshly written, yet ultimately unfulfilling poems. Read it for the verse, and not the story.
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