The Magic of Blood

Rating:
Summary: Gritty, Real, Articulate
Review: Gilb's collection of short stories detail the lives of working class people (not heroes, per se) in a very true to life fashion. I can almost picture Mr. Gilb working with his hands on a high rise or on some odd job, observing what was going on around him and in his own life, preparing to write about what he saw and felt. His stories read that way, and I very much enjoyed this book each time I read it. For the record, the working class Mexican-American friends I have given this book to tell me it is authentic. A corporate suit wouldn't have been able to write it, and thank God Mr. Gilb is not a corporate suit. Hooray for the common man who thinks!

Rating:
Summary: Rather talentless
Review: Not unlike many Chicano, Latino or Mexican-American writers, Gilb is culturally illiterate, in both English and Spanish. The drab stories of humble people from Mexico who fumble in the U.S. results in a series of stories of compelling pathos: drunks, women knocked up, discrimination, economic failure. In other words, this books champions the idiotic idea that Hispanics should embrace the Cult of Victimology. Well, they shouldn't. Why Hispanics should portray themselves and their lives as those of losers defies belief. Better any book by Julia Alvarez, Isabel Allende any day of the week.

Rating:
Summary: Magical Work
Review: Sometimes you come across a book that can change the way you see things. I am not a Latino or from the Southwest, but I come from a family of construction workers. This is the first book that I have ever read that touches that world with honesty, humor, and pathos. The stories make humans out of characters, people usually not given a voice. Gilb makes every ordinary event resonate with mystery. He is a writer of great beauty, even as the language is coarse. Several of his stories are among the best I've ever read. He may be the most original of Latino writers publishing, and his stories are better than most of the well-known, anthologized American ones.